History of the Connecticut Valley in Massachusetts, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers, Vol. I, Part 7

Author: L.H. Everts & Co
Publication date: 1879
Publisher: Philadelphia : Louis H. Everts
Number of Pages: 700

USA > Massachusetts > History of the Connecticut Valley in Massachusetts, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers, Vol. I > Part 7

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From this early Christian church of Britain, the Protestant Church of England claims descent. The sway of the Sce of Rome over the Church of England began with the missionary efforts of St. Austin or Augustin in the year 596, when he was sent by Pope Gregory I. to convert the Anglo-Saxons. St. Augustin was made the first archbishop of Canterbury, but the few remaining British bishops refused to come under his rule.

It is claimed by the Church of England that the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century was but a revival of the ancient church of Britain freed from the sway of Rome.

Of a truth the Church of England, even from the days of the Saxon ITeptarehy, all through the long centuries of Roman rule, was always more or less Protestant in spirit. At the time of the Reformation the Church of England protested against the rule of the Church of Rome. The Puritans pro- tested against the sway of the Church of England in turn, and thus became, as they have aptly been called, the " Protes- tants of Protestants."

Almost from the conversion of the Saxons in England by St. Augustin, Saxon versions of the Bible were in use among the people, from which they obtained Scriptural knowledge, and in the Anglo-Saxon ritual of the Mass both the gospel and the epistle were read by the clergy from the steps of the altar, not in the Latin but in the Anglo-Saxon tongue.t

In the year 1076 even William the Conqueror came near to a quarrel with the Holy See, by forbidding his bishops to obey its citations to Rome, and ordering spiritual eauses to be tried in the county courts .; In the reign of Henry I., which began iu the year A. D. 1100, the larger portion of the English clergy had wives, with Henry's approval, in doubtful submission to the injunetions of the Holy See, and even in the fifteenth cen- tury there were married priests in England .¿

In the year 1301 the barons of Edward I., in the dispute about the Scottish crown with the See of Rome, denied the latter's supremacy in unmistakable terms, and Edward's Stat- ute of Mortmain was passed to protect the people against the heavy pecuniary exactions of the monks and priests.

And so we find from the earliest times up to the days of Wycliffe in the fourteenth century a succession of acts showing that no inconsiderable part of the English people were ex- tremely jealous of what they called continental interference in their religious and eivil affairs.

JOHN WYCLIFFE.

The father of English Puritanism was John Wycliffe. He was born in Yorkshire, near Richmond, about the year 1324, and died peacefully at the age of sixty years, in December, in the year 1384.

Wycliffe first came into notice while he was still an obscure young student at Oxford, when in the year 1351, King Ed- ward's famous Statute of Prorisoes asserted for the English church, in certain matters, independence of the See of Rome.

A traet published by Wycliffe on this occasion, in which he warmly espoused the English cause, not only brought him into notice, but made him famous. Ten years of study and controversy only served to widen bis departure from the Or- thodox, or Roman standard. ITis departure from the Orthodox faith was radical. His views, boldly published in England in the middle of the fourteenth century, differ in no important particular from those held upon the same subjects by the Pil- grim and Puritan fathers of New England, three hundred years later, in the beginning of the seventeenth, nor of their descendants now living, nearly three hundred years later still, at the close of the nineteenth, century.

Wycliffe asserted the entire sufficiency of the Bible as a rule of faith. He denied the supremacy of the Pope. He denied the dogma of the real presence in the eucharist, the validity of absolution and indulgences, as well as the merit of penance and monastic vows. Ile opposed ecclesiastical forms and ceremonies, and the observance of festival days. Ile protested against auricular confession, prayers to saints, the use of set forms of prayer, and denounced the canonical dis- tinction between priests and bishops. |

Ilis numerous writings, many of them in the English tongue, were extensively circulated and read with eagerness

* Prefare to Vol. I., History of New England, p. viii.

+ See Palfrey's History of New England, Vol. I., p. 100.

# Ibid., p. 101.

¿ Palfrey, Vol. I., p. 102. Lyttleton, Life of Henry III., pp. 42, 328. Wilkins, Concilia III., P. 277.

| Palfrey's New England, Vol. I., p. 104.

HISTORY OF THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY.

by all classes of people. There was a decided tendency of opinion in the realm toward change in religious matters, of which movement Wycliffe was the acknowledged leader. Among his supporters were persons no less exalted than the queen and the king's mother, widow of the Black Prince. The House of Commons threw out a bill to suppress his translation of the Bible by a large majority. Chaucer, the father of English literature, was the reformer's friend, and influenced, doubtless, the cultivated intelligence of England by dealing somewhat freely with the Church, the clergy, and the friars in the direction of reform. Yet Wycliffe did not produce all this. The spirit of reform was alive and active in the heart of the English nation. The people heard him gladly. With prophetic tongue he uttered the people's voice.

But the English Reformation, so auspiciously begun, in the days of Wycliffe, under Edward III., was yet destined to slumber for nearly two hundred years, until the great awak- ening in the religious thought of the first quarter of the six- teenth century, known in history as the Reformation, shook to their centre all the kingdoms of the world.

Under the Lancastrian kings the court took a different direction, in attempting to prop " the unsteady throne of an unlineal house," by calling to its aid the spiritual power of Rome. In the troublous times of the Wars of the Roses, questions of religion were mostly lost to view. It was not till the reign of the second Tudor, Henry VIII., that allegiance to Rome was sundered by act of Parliament, and the English sovereign declared to be the head of the English Church. Yet, under Henry VIII., all that the Church of England gained was this emancipation from the control of the Sec of Rome. Her doctrines were still mainly unchanged.

TIIE PROTESTANT CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

The Church of England, as modified by the Reformation, and mainly as she is constituted to-day, assumed her form and shape in doctrine and observances through the measures insti- tuted in her behalf during the reign of the boy-king, Edward VI., who ascended the throne in the year 1547.

In the year 1540, under his father's reign, the Statute of the Six Articles had condemned to death by burning, and to for- feiture of estate, whosoever should deny the real presence, and to imprisonment and confiscation for the first offense, and to death for the second, such as should " in word or writing speak against the celibacy of the clergy, the communion in one kind, vows of chastity, private masses, or auricular con- fession."* Under this law, and others no less severe, against the using or keeping of the Bible in Tyndal's translation, then just made, many suffered death at the stake, and many fled the realm. But an entirely new order of things was in- augurated under Edward VI. " The thunder of the Six Ar- ticles," says Palfrey, " was permitted to die away. Prisoners for heresy were set at liberty, and fugitives were allowed to return from the Continent. Church images were destroyed. Preaching, which had fallen much into disuse, was revived. The Bible, in English, was placed in every church."+ Dur- ing the young king's first year laws were passed directing the dispensation of both the elements, bread and wine, to the laity in the Lord's Supper, and repealing the statute of the Si.c Articles.

In April, 1552, uniformity of public worship was provided by requiring all ministers to use the liturgy which had been prepared under Bishop Cranmer, which is substantially that used by the Church of England to-day in her Book of Com- mon Prayer. Incense, candles, and holy water were forbid- den, and the high altar exchanged for the communion table.

But the use of ministerial robes and vestments, the rochet, the cape, the surplice, was still enjoined upon the clergy.

THE PURITANS.

It was the requirement last above named-that in regard to the use of vestments by the clergy, as provided for in the ritual of Edward VI .- that was destined soon to dismember the Prot- estant Church of England; and it was in the young king's reign that this question of clerical costume came forward into prominent importance.

Those who advocated uniformity in the use of sacred vest- ments claimed that they contributed largely to the seemliness, decency, and dignity of publie worship; that unnecessary de- partures from the practice of the Church of Rome were inex- pedient ; and that to oppose the will of rulers in so small a matter indicated a factions temper rather than the possession of sonund sense. On the other hand, it was alleged that in the popular mind clerical vestments were intimately associated with the "idolatry of Rome," and were part and parcel of the " mischievous machinery of the Mass," and that a " Christian minister owed it to the simplicity and godly sincerity which became his vocation" to abstain from their use.

The party in opposition to the use of the clerical habit soon became known as Puritans, and shortly afterward were called Non-conformists.

In the year 1550, the first overt act occurred in this dispute in the English Protestant Church over the use of vestments by the clergy, which resulted in the coming of the Pilgrim Fathers to Plymouth Rock. In that year (1550) John Hooper was appointed bishop of Gloucester. Belonging to the oppos- ing or Puritan party, he took the resolution to decline the pro- motion rather than to submit to what he considered the dis- honor of clothing himself in the Episcopal robes. The young king was inclined to relent, but Bishops Cranmer and Ridley insisted upon his compliance. He was so obstinate that they put him in jail. At length they persuaded him so far to yield his scruples as to consent to wear the habit of his order at his consecration, and once afterward in preaching at court. After this he put it on no more. His example was followed by a few bishops and numbers of the other clergy.

But the reign of the young king was short, and at its close the Princess Mary succeeded to the throne. During her short reign the old order of things in matters of religion was re- established. In November, 1554, Parliament at a single blow rescinded all the laws respecting religion which had been passed during the last reign. The unholy fires of religious persecu- tion were soon lighted, and over three hundred persons were burned at the stake, among whom were five bishops. Nuni- bers of the dissentients fled to the continent, taking refuge in Frankfort-on-the-Main and other places.

Upon the death of Queen Mary, Nov. 17, 1558, the Princess Elizabeth, the youngest daughter of Henry VIII. by Ann Boleyn, succeeded to the throne of England. Her long reign began with the restitution of the Protestant order. The laws concerning religion passed in the time of her brother, Edward VI., were re-enacted. This was soon followed by two impor- tant acts, the one called the act of Supremacy, and the other the Act of Uniformity. The first required of all the clergy and official laymen an oath renouncing the authority of any foreign priest or prelate in matters both temporal and spiritual, and recognizing the supremacy of the sovereign of England " in all causes ecclesiastical and civil." The latter act forbade all ministers to conduct public worship otherwise than accord- ing to the rubric under the penalty of life-imprisonment for the third offense. But religious persecution did not cease with the death of Queen Mary. During the reign of Elizabeth, numbers of Roman Catholics were punished by imprisonment and forfeiture of estates, and two hundred of them put to death for their religion. On the accession of Queen Elizabeth to the throne, numerous Protestant fugitives to the continent, driven into exile by the rigorous laws of Queen Mary, returned to England. During their absence in different continental cities they had kept up the controversy regarding vestments and

* Burnett, History of the Reformation.

+ History of New England, Vol. I., p. 111.

HISTORY OF THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY.

other requirements of the rubric of Edward VI., begun dur- ing his reign, and on their return this controversy was trans- ferred to England.

The party who followed in the lead of Bishop Hooper, and who were opposed to the use of vestments, had now come to be called Puritans. They not only opposed the use of the eleri- cal habit, but also objected to the use of the sign of the cross in baptism, of the ring in marriage, and of the kneeling posture in the communion.

The queen and Parliament both sided with the advocates of the Prayer-Book, and in 1565 a royal proclamation was issued requiring uniformity in peremptory terms. Upon the issuing of this proclamation of conformity, thirty-seven out of ninety- eight London ministers were summoned for contumaey before the bishops, suspended, and deprived of their livings. This began the long contest in the English Church between the Churchmen and the Puritans, which resulted in the with- drawal of a part of the Puritans to New England in search of that religious liberty which was denied them at home, and in the complete triumph for a while, at least, of the Puritan cause in the mother-country, under Cromwell.

In the year 1583, upon the death of Archbishop Grindal, who was a man of moderate temper and principles, Arch- bishop Whitgift succeeded to the primacy of England. In the week of his consecration he issued instructions to his bishops to forbid and prevent preaching, catechising, and praying in any private family in the presence of persons not belonging to it, and to silence all preachers and calechists who had not received orders from episcopal hands, or who refused or neglected to read the whole service, or to wear the prescribed clerical habit, or to subscribe to the queen's su- premacy, the Thirty-Nine Articles, and the Book of Common Prayer. This was aimed at the Puritan party, and during the first year two hundred and thirty-three ministers of the Church of England, of Puritan proclivities, were suspended in six counties of the province of Canterbury.

By the Act of Supremacy, passed in the first year of Eliza- beth's reign, the sovereign had been authorized to appoint a "Court of High Commission," with power "to visit, reform, redress, order, correct, and amend all errors, heresies, schisms, abuses, contempts, offenses, and enormities whatsoever." This was the royal tribunal for the trial of ecclesiastical causes, and Archbishop Whitgift, in the year 1584, was ordered by Elizabeth to organize this court.

The Court of High Commission was formed by the appoint- ment of forty-four commissioners, of whom twelve were bishops, and began at onee to try persons accused of violating the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity.

And so the contest went on from year to year, with varying intensity, between the two parties of the Church of England, through the remaining years of Queen Elizabeth's reign and into the reign of her successor, until a part of the Puritan party, at least, sought refuge from further persecution in the wilds of America.

III. THE PILGRIM FATHERS.

But years before the appointment of the Court of High Commission a new party in this religious controversy ap- peared upon the troubled scene, which was destined, in the persons of some of its humble followers, to play a prominent part in the world's history. This was the party of "Sepa- ratists," or " Brownists," as they were sometimes called, from the name of their first leader, one congregation of which, in the year 1620, were the Pilgrims of the " Mayflower."

As early as 1567 separate congregations had been formed, and in 1572 the "first-born of all presbyteries" was estab- lished at Wandworth in Surrey .*

Robert Brown was the leader of the new sect which bore

his name in 1581. He not only preached against the ceremo- nies and discipline of the Established Church, but also advo- cated the democratic doctrine of the independency and the/ complete jurisdiction of every congregation in its own affairs, -in short, the Congregational system. But Robert Brown soon went back to the Establishment, and his followers, re- fusing to be called by his name, became known as Separatists or Independents.

In 1592 a congregation of Separatists was gathered at Lon- don by Francis Johnson. It was soon after broken up by the authorities, and the pastor, with a portion of his flock, escaped to Amsterdam, in Holland.

About the year 1594 the Church of the Pilgrims first met at Gainsborough and afterward at Scrooby, " to the north of the Trent, near the joining borders of Nottinghamshire, Lincoln- shire, and Yorkshire." In 1594, Mr. William Brewster, so well known as the leader of the church at Plymouth, was appointed postmaster at Scrooby, and occupied as tenant the Scrooby manor-house. It was at his house that the first meetings were held, Serooby was situated near the high-road from York to London, in the vicinity of the Hatfield Chase. It was a favorite resting-place for the Archbishops of York in their journeys to the metropolis, and was often resorted to for the enjoyment of field-sports. Archbishop Savage often resided there in the reign of Henry VII., and it was for some time the abode of Cardinal Wolsey in his disgrace. Yet Servoby has most honor as the first home of the Church of the Pilgrim Fathers.

But the story of the flight of this church to Holland, and from thence back to England on its way to Plymouth Rock in the " Mayflower," need not be related here.

IV. THE PURITAN FATHERS.

The reader should bear in mind the distinction between the Pilgrim Fathers and Puritan Fathers. It has been seen above that the Pilgrims of Plymouth who landed in 1620 separated from the Established Church of England, and first held their meetings in the Congregational form at the Serooby manor- house in 1694; that they went to Holland as Separatists, and came to America as such. On the other hand, the Puritans, who came to Massachusetts Bay in the year 1630, were simply Non-conformists, and did not separate from the English Church until after their arrival here. Connected with the National Church, they submitted to her authority so far as they could, acknowledged her as their " mother" in all matters of doctrinal concern, and only differed from her as to the propriety of some of her observanecs. HIad liberty been allowed them, they would doubtless have remained in England, and in the bosom of the mother-church. It has been seen in the last preceding chapter that the charter of the colony of Massachusetts was granted in the year 1628. In the same year John Endicot came over and settled in Salem. The next spring he was fol- lowed by Francis Higginson and his company, and in the year 1630 John Winthrop came over with the charter and founded the colony of Massachusetts Bay. William Pynchon, the founder of Springfield, came over with Winthrop and the charter and settled at Roxbury.

True to the object of their coming, the first care of the Puritan Fathers after landing was to provide for their minis- ters, as will be seen by the record of the first General Court held in New England, which is as follows, viz. :

THE FIRST COURT of Assistants holden at Charlton, August 23, Ano. Dom. 1630. "Present-Mr. Jo : Winthrop, Gonnr., Mr. Increase Nowell, Mr. Tho : Dudley, Depnt. Gounr., Mr. Tho: Sharpe, Sr. Rich : Saltonstall, Kt., Mr. Will : Pinchion, Mr. Robte: Ludlowe, Mr. Sim : Bradstreete, Mr. Edward Rossiter.

" IMPR., it was pponnded howe the ministers should be mayntayned. Mr. Wil- son & Mr. Phillips onely ppounded.

" It was ordered that houses should be built for them with convenient specde, att the publique charge. Sr. Rich : Saltonstall undertooke to see it done att his planacon for Mr. Phillips and Mr. Gonnr., at the other plantacon for Mr. Wilson.

# Barry's Hist. of Mass., Vol. I., p. 46.

HISTORY OF THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY.

" It was ppounded what should be their p'sent maynetenance.

"Ordered, that Mr. Phillips should have allowed him 3 hogsheads of meale, 1 hogsh of malte, 4 bnshells of Indian corne, 1 bushell of vatmeale, half an hun- dred of salte fishe ; for apparell and other prisions XXL, or els to have Xl. given him in money p, ann., to make his owne pvisions if hee chuse it the rather, the yeare to begin the first of September nexte.

" It., that Mr. Wilson should hereafter XXI. p. ann, till his wife come over ; his yeare to begin the 10th of July last. All this to be att the common charge, those of Mattapan & Salem only exempted."*

CHAPTER VIII.

THE REMOVAL TO THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY.

IN the preceding chapter some account is given of who and what the early settlers of Massachusetts were, and what oc- casioned their coming to the New World. In this chapter will be given some account of the early emigration of a part of them to the fertile valley of the Connecticut, and the estab- lishment of the principal towns in the Connecticut Valley in Massachusetts.

The removal of William Pynchon and his few followers in the year 1636 from Roxbury at the bay across the virgin wil- derness, one hundred miles to the fertile wild meadows of the Connecticut Valley, was not a separate undertaking, but formed a small part only of an important movement which resulted in not only the planting of Springfield, at the mouth of the Agawam, but also in the founding of the State of Connecticut. At the time of this removal from the bay to the river the people at the bay were in the midst of a serious religious controversy, occasioned by the promulgation of what they called the heretical views of Ann Hutchinson and Roger Williams, and religious considerations may have had some- thing to do with the removal. That this may have been the ease more particularly with Mr. Pynchon, he being a man of what were then considered liberal religious views, as the sequel will show, is more than probable. That Mr. Pynchon with the rest had some desire to settle outside the jurisdiction of the Massachusetts colony, and set up a separate government, the facts seem to warrant, for during the first two or three years after their arrival in the valley the settlement of Agawam (now Springfield) was deemed to be a part and parcel of the Connecticut colony, and as such sent delegates to Hartford to meet in General Court.

Mr. Pynchon had been engaged in the fur trade at the bay, and his selection of Agawam, at the mouth of the stream of that name, down which the Indians brought their furs in bark canoes from the great mountain beaver-hunting country of the Mohicans and from the Wo-ro-noaks at Westfield, was doubt- less influenced by that consideration as well as others.

It was not until Mr. Pynchon had some serious difficulty with the Connecticut people, and the discovery was made that Springfield really lay within the Massachusetts jurisdiction, that she quite abruptly separated herself from the control of the Hartford colony, and her people renewed their govern- mental relations with the people at the Bay. And this change of allegiance by the Springfield people, from the ITartford authorities to the Bay, was not made without sharp contro- versy between the General Courts of the two colonies, and was followed by a bitter feud in regard to import duties, which is treated of in a succeeding chapter of this work.

FIRST VISIT OF THE QUON-EH-TA-CUT SAGAMORES AT THIE BAY.

As early as the year 1631, the year after the founding of Boston by Winthrop, and five years before Pynchon and his band founded Springfield, three Indian sachems came to the Bay from the Connecticut River, for the purpose of inviting

the English to come and settle in the fertile meadows that border the stream.

In " Winthrop's History of New England," the following graphic account is given of this visit, which seems to have been the first time the attention of the settlers at the Bay was called to the subject of emigrating to the Connecticut River Valley, and doubtless led the way to their coming. Winthrop's account + is this :

" April 4, 1631, Wah-gin-na-cut, a sagamore on the River Quon-ch-ta-cut, which lies west of Nar-a-gan-cet, came to the governour at Boston with John Sagamore and Jack Straw (an Indian who had lived in England, and had served Sir Walter Raleigh, and was now turned Indian again), and divers of their sannops, and brought a letter to the governour from Mr. Endecott, to this effect : that the said Wah-gin-na- cut was very desirous to have some Englishmen to come plant in his country, and offered to find them corn, and give them yearly eighty skins of beaver, and that the country was very fruitful, etc., and wished that there might be two men sent with him to see the country. The governour entertained them at dinner, but would send none with him. He discovered after that the sagamore is a very treacherous man, and at war with the Pe-koath (a far greater sagamore). His country is not above five days' journey from us by land. The gov- ernor," continues Winthrop, "entertained them at dinner, but would send none with him."

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History of the Connecticut Valley in Massachusetts, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers, Vol. I, Part 7

Author: L.H. Everts & Co Publication date: 1879 Publisher: Philadelphia : Louis H. Everts Number of Pages: 700

Author: L.H. Everts & Co
Publication date: 1879
Publisher: Philadelphia : Louis H. Everts
Number of Pages: 700