USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Salem > Reminiscences of Salem, Massachusetts : embracing notices of its eminent men known to the author forty years ago > Part 4
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30 Edward Howes, in a letter to Jolin Winthrop, Jr., dated London, March 25, 1633, says : "There was presented to the Lords lately about twenty-two of Capt. Endicott's Laws," 29 Mass. Hist. Coll., 257. 1 Mass. Col. Rec., 48, 361, 363, and Letters of Cradock, 386, 398. See also the learned note to the case of Commonwealth v. Roxbury. 9 Gray (Massachusetts Reports), 450, note pp. 503, 506, 507. In the petition of the General Court to Parliament in 1651, signed by Endicott and Dud- ley, then Governor and Deputy Governor. after alluding to their original charter, under which they came over " about three or four and twenty years since," they say : " By which Patent, liberty and power was granted to us to live under the government of a governor, magistrates of our own choosing, and under laws of our own making (not being repugnant to the laws of England), according to which patent we have governed ourselves above this twenty-three years." This covers the period from 1628 to 1651, including Endicott's first administration under the charter in 1629. 1 Hutchinson's Hist. of Mass., 448.
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the preceding century, and may be traced still further back.
The separatists, to which sect the Plymouth emigrants belonged, left the established church ; the nonconformists remained within the pale, contending against its prelacy, its ceremonies and discipline, while not objecting to its doctrine. In such a contest the tendency was constantly to drive the nonconformists to separatism ; and here in the new world, distant from the church and its influences, it would have been strange if the Puritan had still con- tinued to cling to the hierarchy from whose persecutions he had fled. There was no bishop here, from whom could descend spiritual and ecclesiastical power upon the minis- ter to be installed in his holy office. Neither the Com- pany in London nor the Governor here possessed any power of appointment. It must therefore come from the congregations, from the Christian men who, called of God to their high estate, could thus exercise the function of prelate and of king. Endicott doubtless reached this conclusion without difficulty ; he had learned from Brad- ford and Fuller their outward form of worship, that it was far different from the common report, and such as he had always professed and maintained. Skelton and Hig- ginson, who were asked to give their views of the manner in which the minister should be called to his office, re- plied : there was a twofold calling, "the one an inward calling, when the Lord moved the heart of a man to take that calling upon him, and fitted him with gifts for the same ; the second was an outward calling which was from the people, when a company of believers are joined in covenant to walk together in all the ways of God." These conclusions were not reached without protracted consulta- tion. The ceremonies that followed were simple and primitive. The members of the congregation voted for
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whom they would have as pastor and teacher, and Skel- ton and Higginson were chosen. Four of the gravest members of the church laid their hands in prayer upon them and they were ordained to their sacred duties. A covenant was afterward drawn up, and signed by the members, and on a later day the deacons and elders were elected, the former proceedings were affirmed, and Brad- ford, who was present from Plymouth, gave the right hand of fellowship to the new church.31
Such was the first New England ordination. At a sin- gle blow they had separated the organization of the church from the authority of the state; but the full sig- nificance of the act was not appreciated by the actors in that memorable scene. What seem to us the necessary conclusions from such a step did not follow ; and doubt- less it did not occur to Endicott or the ministers that they had done anything more than recognize the right of a godly people in every parish to choose its minister, under the eye of a godly magistrate. The church was still to continue a part of the Puritan state : its membership was for many years to be the qualification of those who were to make its laws and administer its authority ; and the conduct of its teachers, and the religious belief and prac- tice of its people, were to be the subject of investigation and correction by the temporal power. When we con- sider the dangers that surrounded the infant state and church, we cannot at this day know that their union was not necessary and essential to the public safety.
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Though the Puritan was in advance of his time, he was still subject to its influences. The idea that religion could be sustained, except through the aid of political
31 Letter of Chas. Gott, July 30, 1629. Hubbard's Hist. N. E., 264. Morton's N. E. Memorial, 148.
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forces, had not yet dawned on the world at large, and had not then occurred to the Puritan. The experience too of mankind was against it. Luther would have been destroyed but for the aid of the Elector of Saxony ; Cal- vin was sheltered and protected by the Republic of Ge- neva. Dear to the heart of the Puritan was his religious faith ; alone in the wilderness, surrounded by perils, God was very near to him, and he wanted a church to declare and defend His word. Dear also to him was the liberty of the people, and he wished to found a government that ·would regulate and protect it. That the church would furnish such a bulwark to the rising state, and that the state would' find the church a source of strength and purity, were the natural and necessary conclusions which he reached in common with the current opinion of his time.
But even in the small band of colonists there was oppo- sition to the new church. The question was asked, whether this was a church? John and Samuel Browne, who were brothers and members of Endicott's Council, recently arrived, men of character and influence, set up a separate worship of their own, in conformity to the disci- pline and ceremonies of the Church of England; and charged that the ministers "were separatists and would be annabaptists." A conference was held before the Gover- nor. Accommodation of the dispute was impossible. En- dicott was in no mood, at this time, and in the critical . condition of affairs, to tolerate schism. He acted with his usual vigor ; finding that the brothers were of high spirit, and that their speeches and practices tended to mutiny and faction, he told them "that New England was no place for such as they," and sent them back to England by the returning ships.32 This act was not formally dis-
32 1 Palfrey's Hist. N. E., 298.
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approved by the Company in London, though cautious and politic letters were sent to Endicott and the minis- ters. 33 He might well have relied on the instructions in a previous letter, in which Cradock said : "If any prove incorrigible, and will not be reclaimed by gentle correc- tion, ship such persons home by the 'Lion's Whelp,' rather than keep them there to infect and to be an occa- sion of scandal unto others." 34
The question thus decided was of great importance, for it settled the construction put upon the Charter, that the Company and its officers had the right to exclude from their chartered limits all persons whose schemes and prac- tices were subversive of authority, creating dissensions, fomenting discord and mutiny, and thereby imperilling the safety of the Colony. This course was afterwards followed, not only against those whose conduct and speech impaired the authority of the rulers, but against those guilty of crimes peculiarly infamous and dangerous to the young colony. "Religious intolerance, like every other public restraint, is criminal, wherever it is not needful for the public safety; it is simply self-defence, whenever tolerance would be public ruin." 35
. The Colony was like a ship at sea, or an army on the march, and disaffection and mutiny in the crew, or in the ranks, must be summarily dealt with. The wide conti- nent was open to colonization, but the narrow strip of land called Massachusetts had been given to this people as their own, with power to determine who should enjoy and be admitted to its privileges, and upon what terms and conditions. It was a heavy labor they had under- taken, beset with danger on every side ; and only with a
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33 1 Mass. Col. Rec., 51, 407, 40S. 341 Mass. Col. Rec., 393.
35 1 Palfrey's Hist. N. E., 300.
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united people could the work be accomplished. They banished those only who disturbed their peace, and who they thought endangered their safety ; and while they adhered to this rule, they had the right to exercise this power.
Another winter of suffering and death followed this new arrival of colonists. Eighty died, and the accom- plished and gifted Higginson contracted the fatal malady, which soon carried him to the grave. But in the summer of 1629 he had written that glowing description of New England and its promise, which passed through three edi- tions in London within a few months, awakened an intense interest in the new Colony, and led many to embark.
On the other side of the water great changes had been made. The proposition of Cradock, that the whole gov- ernment with the Charter should be removed to New England, had been after grave debate, adopted by the Company ; and a number of gentlemen of worth and for- tune agreed to come over with their families and cast their lot with the colonists.36 Cradock withdrew from his office of Governor, and John Winthrop was chosen to succeed him. A Deputy Governor was elected, and eighteen Assistants, among whom was Endicott.37 Great prepara- tions were made, and in the spring seventeen vessels sailed from England, bearing more than a thousand pas- sengers, and among them were Winthrop, Dudley, Salton- stall, and Johnson.
The period of Endicott's administration was drawing to its close ; the year for which he was elected was soon . to expire. Salem was no longer to be the seat of the government, but merely one of the towns in the Colony of which Boston was to be the capital. An era of pros-
36 Young's Chron. of Mass., 281, 282.
37 1 Mass. Col. Rec., 58.
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perity and growth was about to dawn with the coming . fleets of Winthrop.
. But we cannot forget the courage which held the place through those two memorable years of suffering and dan- ger, and amid sorrow, tears, and death, sent back to England words of hope and confidence ; a courage, not born of mere personal fortitude and contempt of danger, but inspired and sustained by a devout trust that God would lead his children to the promised land ; nor can we. forget that here the foundation of the State was laid, in soil sanctified by the blood of those who perished in the effort.
That our knowledge of the events of those two years is so imperfect must ever be a subject of regret; though the student of that period is not without hope that the records of Endicott's government and his letters home may yet be found. Henceforward we move in a clearer light.
On the 12th of June, 1630, Governor Winthrop, bear- ing the Charter, arrived at Salem, in the Arbella. He was cordially welcomed by Endicott, and a warm and ten- der friendship seems to have begun at that time, which lasted without a cloud while Winthrop lived. They were both throughout their lives in the constant service of the Colony, and during twenty-seven of the thirty-five years which followed, one or the other held the office of Gover- nor. Winthrop soon assumed the management of affairs. The great services which he rendered in developing and establishing the Colony, cannot well be over-estimated. He possessed a rare genius for government, and was ad- mirably trained for the execution of his work. It would require more time than we have, properly to delineate his character, to measure his powers, or to point out the dis- tinctive features of our system, for which we are indebted
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to him. His name must ever stand among the great names of Massachusetts.
During the next thirty years the Puritans had full opportunities to develop and mould their institutions. Though threatened at times with interference from Eng- land, they maintained their course and were practically independent and subject to no control by the authorities at home. During the first ten years Charles was too much occupied with his own difficulties to give much at- tention to this side of the Atlantic. During the second ten years the parliamentary struggle and the civil war were raging ; and during the last ten there was no king in England.
It was the golden age of the New England Puritans ; and in 1660, when Charles II was restored, their great work was substantially done, and the system which we have inherited was settled on a firm and enduring basis .. Having a government under the Charter clothed only with general powers, they started out with no written plans or constitution ; they had no theories prepared in the closet and based upon abstract principles. They wanted a free government, annually responsible to the will of the free- men of the Colony, in which the greatest liberty should exist that was compatible with order and authority ; and gradually it grew into symmetry and beauty, measure fol- lowing measure, as the hour and the exigency demanded.
When the freemen became too numerous to, meet in general court, town representation was established ; and later they adopted that great security of a constitutional government, a legislature of two co-ordinate branches. When the question arose how local authority should be administered and taxes levied, the system of town gov- ernment, substantially the same as it exists to-day, was created in 1636; and these little republics, the best
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schools of self-government in the world, survived the loss of charters, and even in times of revolution protected the people and maintained order. They early understood. that to make the government they intended to found, enduring and perpetual, the people must be educated, and they made the schools a public charge, 38 and endowed the college at Cambridge. The same year that the Com- mons of England voted? to publish Lord Coke's Com- mentary on Magna Charta, the Massachusetts colonists established a code of fundamental laws, known as "The Body of Liberties," in which it is declared that : "The free fruition of such liberties, immunities and privileges, as humanity, civility, and christianity call for as due to every man in his place and proportion without impeach- ment and infringement, hath ever been and ever will be the tranquillity and stability of Churches and Common- wealths."40 To strengthen their hands at home and abroad they joined the Confederation of the New England Colo- nies, thus shadowing forth the Union of these States. And thus we might trace through all the laws and policy of the Colony the gradual growth of our institutions.
38 At a Quarterly Court, Mar. 30, 1641, " Col. Endicott moved about the fences and a free school, and therefore wished a whole town meeting about it." This applied to Salem. See 1 Felt's Annals of Salem, p. 427, et seq.
39 This was ordered May 12th, 1641.
40 Francis C. Gray, Esq., in a learned paper on the Early Laws of Massa- chusetts, published in 1843, says : " The Body of Liberties really established by them exhibits throughout the hand of the practised lawyer, familiar with the prin- ciples and securities of English liberty ; and although it retains some strong traces of the times, is in the mam far in advance of them, and in several respects in ad. vance of the common law of England at this day. It shows that our ancestors, instead of deducing all their laws from the Books of Moses, established at the out- set a code of fundamental principles, which, taken as a whole, for wisdom, equity, adaptation to the wants of their community, and a liberality of sentiment superior to the age in which it was written, may fearlessly challenge a comparison with any similar production, from Magna Charta itself to the latest Bill of Rights, that has been put forth in Europe or America." 8 Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., pp. 191, 199, 218. See also 2 Mass. Col. Rec., 212. "The men of Massachusetts did much quote Lord Coke." 2 Bancroft's Hist. U. S., p. 430.
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Throughout this period of thirty years it had been the constant aim of her rulers to keep Massachusetts free and untrammelled. This governed and controlled all hier re- lations to the mother country during that time. The removal of the government with the Charter was probably prompted and executed that such a purpose might be carried out. When in 1635 a movement was made to deprive them of their Charter, hopeful of assistance doubt- less from their. brothers in England, then nearly ready for open conflict with Charles, they erected fortifications in Boston harbor, appointed a military commission with ex- traordinary powers, and to secure a supply of musket balls, they were made a legal tender, at a farthing apiece, instead of coin, the circulation of which was prohibited. And this was in substance their reply to the demand for their Charter. In 1647 they resisted successfully the right of Parliament to reverse the decision and control the government of Massachusetts. And under the Com- monwealth of England they kept this purpose steadily in view ; they successfully remonstrated against the attempt to impose upon them a new Charter, and to place gover- nors and commissioners in all English colonies in Amer- ica ; they did not yield to the plan of Cromwell to trans- fer them to Ireland to be a defence against Catholicism ; and would not consent to waste their strength by trans- planting their people to Jamaica.41
They did not compromise their independence, and yielded no more to the Parliament and the Protector than they had to the King. They expressed no formal ap- proval of the execution of King Charles, or of the eleva- tion of Cromwell or his son. They did nothing to impair
41 Petition to Parliament in 1651; Letter of Endicott to Cromwell in the same year; 1 Hutchinson's Hist. of Mass., 448, 450. 2 Palfrey's Hist. N. E .. 390.
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or imperil the safety of New England. To her, the child of their suffering, they had transferred their allegiance.
But their hopes of independence were not to be real- ized. With the Restoration came a new order of things. The American colonies had prospered, they became ob- jects of interest and worthy the attention of the Crown, and there were those who coveted their places of honor or emolument. There was not the same intense spirit prevailing among the people, and religion was no longer the vital question that it had been. There was no Puri- tan party in England like that which before the Great Rebellion had given aid and comfort to their brothers in New England ; a generation had passed away ; the Puri- tans of Cromwell were scattered and broken ; some had perished on the field or the scaffold, others were in exile or in prison.
Soon after the Restoration, the struggle began in Mas- sachusetts to save the Charter and the Government; it dragged along with varying fortune through twenty weary years, and the final judgment was entered and the Char- ter annulled in 1684. Then came the brief rule of Dud- ley, the tyranny of Andros, the Revolution of 1688, the temporary government of Bradstreet, and the Province . Charter of 1692 under which Massachusetts lived till our own Revolution.
It would have been a sad experience to the Puritan leaders of 1628 and 1630 to have witnessed these events. Happily, Endicott and Winthrop and Dudley were spared the spectacle. To them it would have seemed as if their children were descending into the house of bondage. But in the Providence which rules the affairs of men and states, it was but a stage of discipline and growth, whereby the consecrated democracy and godly magistracy of the Puritan Colony finally bloomed into the full and rounded beauty of the republican Commonwealth.
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The Province Charter and its royal governor did not destroy what the Puritan had done. Child of the century that preceded him, trained and educated for his great work, he had builded wisely and well. The town govern- ment and the town meeting which he had created proved indestructible, and the school-house, though built of logs, more enduring than castle or cathedral. All that was best in his principles of conduct and methods of govern- ment had passed into the life, the thought, the social habits of the people, and was stamped on the character of his posterity ; from father to son, through successive generations, were transmitted a love of liberty, an obedi- ence to law, a desire for knowledge, a reverence for the teacher and the teachings of religion, a faculty for understanding and dealing with public interests, a wise economy and thrift, a deep seated belief that the general welfare was more desirable than private good or gain, and with all these a fervent love for the hills and valleys of New England.
And so may it be to the end; and may your descen- dants who meet here, as fifty or a hundred years go round, to commemorate the landing at Salem, be true and faithful to the memory of their fathers, and stand for the liberty and truth which the Puritan taught, with the hazard not only of their goods, but of their lives, if need be.
NEWBERRY LIBRARY CHICAGO
THE
FIFTH HALF CENTURY
OF THE
ARRIVAL OF JOHN W INTHROP
AT
SALEM, MASSACHUSETTS.
COMMEMORATIVE EXERCISES
BY THE ESSEX INSTITUTE
JUNE 22, 1880.
[From the HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS OF THE ESSEX INSTITUTE ]
SALEM : PRINTED FOR THE ESSEX INSTITUTE. 1880.
THE
FIFTH HALF CENTURY
OF THE
ARRIVAL OF OHN W INTHROP
AT
SALEM, MASSACHUSETTS.
COMMEMORATIVE
EXERCISES
BY THE
ESSEX INSTITUTE,
JUNE 22, 1880.
THE NEWBERRY LIBRARY CHICAGO
[From the HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS OF THE ESSEX INSTITUTE.]
SALEM: PRINTED FOR THE ESSEX INSTITUTE. 1880.
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INTRODUCTION.
THE two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the arrival of John Winthrop, at Salem, with the charter and records of the Massachusetts Bay Company, occurring on June 22, 1880, it was deemed meet and appropriate that the first field meeting of the season should be held on that day, at the Pavilion on Salem Neck, from which is obtained an extensive view of the bay, and of the shore along which the fleet sailed ere the anchors were dropped in the waters of New England; and that the exercises of the occasion, instead of a discussion on subjects of general scientific and historical interest, should be devoted . to a recital of incidents connected with this important event, or such other topics as the time and place might suggest.
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A description of the appearance of Salem harbor, at this early period in our history, may be gleaned from the following extracts from the diary of Rev. Francis Higgin- son, who, under date of "Fryday, June 26, 1629," writes : "The sea was abundantly stored with rockweed and yel- low flowers like gillyflowers. By noon we were within 3 leagues of Capan, and as we sayled along the coast we saw every hill and dale, and every island full of gay woods and high trees. The nearer we came to the shoare the more flowers in abundance, sometymes scattered abroad, sometymes joyned in sheets 9 or 10 yards long, which we supposed to be brought from the low meadows by the tyde. Now what with fine woods and greene trees by land, and their yellow flowers paynting the sea, made us all desirous to see our new paradise of New England, whence we saw such forerunning signals of fer- tilitie afarre off." On Monday, June 29, 1629, he writes : "we passed the curious and difficult entrance into the large and spacious harbour of Naimkecke, and as we passed along it was wonderful to behould so many islands replenished with thicke wood and high trees and many fayre green pastures."1
Much valuable information on this subject may be ob- tained from Rev. Joseph B. Felt's Historical Sketch of the Forts on Salem Neck, read at a field meeting on Salem Neck, Thursday, Aug. 20, 1863, and printed in the fifth volume of the Historical Collections of the Insti- tute.
The Pavilion is located at or near the land granted by the town of Salem, of six acres, to Rev. John Higginson in 1661. This land was conveyed by deed (Reg. Deeds,
1 See Hutchinson's Collection of Papers, pages 41 and 44.
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Essex, vol. iii, fol. 396), 25, 9, 1670, to Thomas Savage, who on August 6, 1675, transferred the same by deed of gift to his daughter Sarah and her husband, John Higgin- son, jr., with lands adjoining which he had purchased of other parties, in all about twenty-eight acres (Reg. Deeds, Essex, vol. iv, fol. 383).
A grandson of John Higginson, jr., the fourth John Higginson2 in succession (and the four were living at the period from the birth of the youngest Jan. 10, 1697-8, to the death of the eldest in Dec. 9, 1708) conveyed, April 8, 1730, to Benj. Ives (see Reg. Deeds, Essex, vol. lv, fol. 92).
After the death of Benjamin Ives in 1752, the estate with additional purchases, including land obtained from the town by vote of the citizens, in exchange for Pignal's3 or Roache's Point, on which is located the present alms- house, amounting to forty acres, etc., passed into the possession of his son John Ives, who conveyed the same to Richard Derby4 May 16, 1758 (see Reg. Deeds, Essex, vol. cxliv, fol. 40).
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