USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1630-1880. Vol. I > Part 47
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" Upon these considerations we are bold to renew our humble supplications to your Lordships, that we may be suffered to live here in this wilderness, and that this poor plantation, which hath found more favor from God than many others, may not find less favor from your Lordships; that our liberties should be restrained, when others are enlarged ; that the door should be kept shut unto us, while it stands open to all other plantations ; that men of ability should be debarred from us, while they have encouragement to other colonies.
" We dare not question your Lordships' proceedings ; we only desire to open our griefs where the remedy is to be expected. If in anything we have offended his Majesty and your Lordships, we humbly prostrate ourselves at the footstool of supreme authority ; let us be made the object of his Majesty's clemency, and not cut off, in our first appeal, from all hope of favor. Thus, with our earnest prayers to the King of kings for long life and prosperity to his sacred Majesty and his royal family, and for all honor and welfare to your Lordships, we humbly take leave." 1
Hutchinson 2 says: " It was never known what reception this answer met with. It is certain that no further demand was made." If Hutchinson
1 Hutchinson, Mass. Bay, i. 507-509. 2 Ibid., i. 88.
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THE CHARTER OF KING CHARLES THE FIRST.
had been as familiar with Winthrop's manuscript Journal, or History, as he was with Hubbard's History, he would have found, under date of May, 1639, the following entry : -
" The Governor received letters from Mr. Cradock, and in them another order from the Lords Commissioners, to this effect : "That, whereas they had received our petition upon their former order, &c., by which they perceived we were taken with some jealousies and fears of their intentions, &c., they did accept of our answer, and did now declare their intentions to be only to regulate all plantations to be subordinate to the said Commission ; and that they meant to continue our liberties, &c. ; and therefore did now peremptorily require the Governor to send them our patent by the first ship ; and that, in the mean time, they did give us, by that order, full power to go on in the government of the people until we had a new patent sent us ; and, withal, they added threats of further course to be taken with us if we failed."
The next paragraph of the Journal is interesting, as giving a little piece of private history, and showing the shrewd qualities of those with whom the English Government had to deal: -
" This order being imparted to the next General Court, some advised to return answer to it. Others thought fitter to make no answer at all, because, being sent in a private letter, and not delivered by a certain messenger, as the former was, they could not proceed upon it, because they could not have any proof that it was delivered to the Governor; and order was taken, that Mr. Cradock's agent, who delivered the letter to the Governor, &c., should, in his letters to his master, make no mention of the letters he delivered to the Governor."
This furnishes a sufficient reason why Hutchinson never heard of this order of the Commissioners and the action taken on it. No official record was made of it, and no papers were left on file. Indeed, as to most of the transactions narrated here respecting the patent, and which were the subject of so much anxiety, the records of the General Court are wholly silent.
In this last order the Lords Commissioners frankly admit their object. They intended to bring all the plantations into subjection under their com- mission. "The charter," says Professor Parker, " stood in their way. They called for it, and it did not come. Process to enforce a forfeiture of it had failed. There was a very good reason for this thrice-repeated demand by the Com- missioners. Their commission purported to give it to them, with authority to revoke it if, upon view of it, they found anything hurtful to the King, his crown, or prerogative royal. The possession of it was thus made necessary to a revocation by the Commissioners. A view of the copy was not suffi- cient. No reason is apparent why this might not have been made otherwise. Perhaps it would have been if there had been any apprehension of difficulty in obtaining possession. But so it stood. Therefore the repeated attempts to obtain a surrender, with the threats if it was not forthcoming. It was im- portant to exhibit a semblance of a legal revocation. There were too many complaints of the exercise of arbitrary power in England to render it ex- pedient to add others in relation to the colonies." 1
1 Lecture, as above, p. 25.
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
All these proceedings, at least in Massachusetts, were a nullity. "Every- thing went on as if Westminster Hall had not spoken. The disorders of the mother country were a safeguard of the infant liberty of New England." Sir Ferdinando Gorges, the newly-appointed General Governor, did not come to New England. There was a rumor that the " great ship," which Mason and others had built " to send over the General Governor, . . . being launched, fell in sunder in the midst." 1
OLIVER CROMWELL. 2
1 Winthrop, New England, i. 161.
2 [This is engraved, by permission of the Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, from a contemporary min- iature, ascribed to Cooper, whose ownership is traced back from Mr. Winthrop through the
late Joseph Coolidge, President Jefferson, and Geo. W. Erving. Jass. Hist. Soc. Proc., March, 1880, p. 365. For Cromwell's purpose to fly to America see N'. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., April, 1866 .- En.]
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THE CHARTER OF KING CHARLES THE FIRST.
For thirty years the freemen of Massachusetts managed their affairs with very little interruption from the mother country. There were times of anxiety, and there were occasions of annoyance, as we have already seen, but during this period they were substantially independent. From the year 1640 to the Restoration they had little apprehensions of danger to their civil or religious privileges. They recognized the importance of keeping on good terms with the Parliament, and subsequently with Cromwell. Hutch- inson says he has " nowhere met with any marks of disrespect to the mem- ory of the late King, and there is no room to suppose the colonists were under disaffection to his son; and if they feared his restoration it was because they expected a change in religion, and that a persecution of all Nonconformists would follow it."1 The restoration of royal authority gave occasion to some fears, grounded in part on uncertainty as to the character of the new King and his ministers and advisers, as well as respects the policy which he might adopt towards New England. The declaration from Breda was calculated to dispel alarm. While their charter remained good in English law, they rested upon it as a sufficient shield.
In July, 1660, news arrived that the King had been proclaimed in Eng- land, but no advices had been received from authority, and he was not pro- claimed in the colony. At the session of the Court in October, a motion was made for an Address to be sent, but it did not prevail. There were rumors that England was in an unsettled condition, that the body of the people were dissatisfied, and fears were felt that an address might fall into the hands of parties for whom it was not intended. In November, how- ever, they were informed that all matters were settled, and letters were re- ceived from Capt. John Leverett, their agent in London, and others, that petitions and complaints had been preferred against the Colony, to the King in Council, by Mason and Gorges, -each a grandson and heir of a late more distinguished proprietor of lands in New England, - and by others; that the Quakers and some of the Eastern people had been making their grievances known, and that the demand was for a general governor to be sent over.2
An extraordinary meeting of the General Court was called on the 19th of December, and a loyal address to the King was agreed upon, and another to the two Houses of Parliament. Letters were also sent to Lord Manches- ter, Lord Say and Scle, and others of note, to intercede in behalf of the colony. The Address to the King was lavish in compliments, and abounded in Scriptural phraseology.
" May it please your Majesty," they say, "in the day wherein you happily say, you now know that you are again king over your British Israel, to cast a favorable eye upon your poor Mephibosheths, now -and, by reason of lameness in respect of distance, not until now - appearing in your presence ; we mean New England, kneeling with the rest of your subjects before your Majesty as her restored king. We forget not our ineptness as to these approaches. We at present own such impotency as renders us
1 Mass. Bay, i. 209. 2 Hutchinson, Papers, pp. 322, 323.
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
unable to excuse our impotency of speaking unto our lord the king ; yet contemplating such a king who hath also seen adversity, that he knoweth the hearts of exiles, who himself hath been an exile ; the aspect of majesty thus extraordinarily circumstanced influenceth and animateth exanimated outcasts, yet outcasts as we hope for the truth, to make this Address unto their Prince, hoping to find grace in your sight."
This is certainly a very unpromising beginning, both as to rhetoric and as to taste. The Address proceeds to supplicate protection " in the continu- ance both of our civil privileges and of our religious liberties, according to the grantees' known end of suing for the patent conferred upon this Planta- tion by your royal father. ... Touching complaints put in against us, our humble request only is that for the interim, wherein we are dumb by reason of absence, your Majesty would permit nothing to make an impression upon your royal heart against us, until we have opportunity and license to answer for ourselves." As to the Quakers, " the Quakers died, not because of their other crimes, how capital socver, but upon their superadded pre- sumptuous and incorrigible contempt of authority." 1
The General Court's instructions to their agent are expressed in a business- like manner. He is to interest as many gentlemen of worth in Parliament, or that are near the King, as possible, and " get speedy and true information of his Majesty's sense of our petition, and of the government and people here, together with the like of the Parliament." As to any complaints "relating to the bounds and limits of our patent," they desire to have liberty to make answer for themselves; and "if any objection be made that we have forfeited our patent in several particulars, you may answer that you desire to know the particulars objected, and that you doubt not but a full answer will be given thereto in due season."
The King's answer to the Address of the General Court, dated February 15, 1660-61, was brief, but gracious : -
" We have made it our care to settle our lately distracted kingdom at home, and to extend our thoughts to increase the trade and advantages of our colonies and planta- tions abroad. Amongst which, as we consider New England to be one of the chiefest, having enjoyed and grown up in a long and orderly establishment, so we shall not come behind any of our royal predecessors in a just encouragement and protection of all our loving subjects there, whose application unto us, since our late happy restoration, hath been very acceptable, and shall not want its due remembrance upon all seasonable occasions ; neither shall we forget to make you and all our good people in those parts equal partakers of those promises of liberty and moderation to tender consciences expressed in our gracious declarations." 2
Such benign language, employed by the King through Secretary Mor- rice, was well calculated to allay anxiety, and undoubtedly prepared the way for the reception of another document of a different character, which proba-
1 This address was printed this year in Lon- presented unto His Most Gracious Majesty, Feb. don in a small quarto of eight pages, entitled, 11, 1660; that is, 1661, N. s. : the year then be- gan on the 25th of March. The Humble Petition and Address of the General Court sitting at Boston, in New England, &c., 2 Hutchinson, Papers, pp. 329-333-
35 I
THE CHARTER OF KING CHARLES THE FIRST.
bly came by the same ship, yet bearing a little earlier date. This was an order for the arrest of Colonels Whalley and Goffe, the fugitive regicides, who arrived in the colony the preceding July, and had been seen in Boston by one Captain Breedan, a commercial adventurer from England, who, on his return home, gave information thereof to the authorities.
The Navigation Act of Cromwell, through the friendly feeling of the Protector, had been a dead letter in the Colony. The Convention Parlia- ment enacted a more stringent law. This forbade the importation of mer- chandise into any English colony, except in English vessels, with English crews ; and prohibited the exportation of certain colonial staples, specified, from the place of production to any other ports than such as belonged to England. The penalty in both cases was forfeiture of vessel and cargo. This oppressive system was extended, three years later, by confining the import trade of the colonists to a direct commerce with England, forbidding them to bring from any other country, or in any but English ships, the pro- ducts, not only of England, but of any European soil.1
It was not without reason that the General Court apprehended some dif- ficulty in the execution of the more rigorous law passed in the year of the Restoration. Yet they desired to place themselves right on the record, and repealed certain laws which had hitherto made their harbor free to " all ships which came for trading only from other parts ; " while they authorized the Governor to require bonds of the ship-masters coming hither, as the Naviga- tion Act required, and returns to be made before they had liberty to depart. And, in order to give no unnecessary cause for complaint that the provisions of their charter had not been adhered to in a certain respect, they repealed the law limiting the number of Assistants to fourteen, and permitted the free- men to choose eighteen Assistants, " as the Patent hath ordained." The practice, however, remained the same.2
The government of the English colonies was first lodged in the Privy Council. The plan next devised, in 1634, was that of the Commission which has already been referred to, and of which Laud was at the head. At an early period of the Civil War, in 1642, a Parliamentary Commission was intrusted with the superintendence of colonial affairs, with Robert, Earl of Warwick, at its head.3 But this last commission exercised little authority. One of Lord Clarendon's earliest measures on the Restoration was the formation, in December, 1660, of a Council of Foreign Planta- tions, which was invested with similar powers to that last named. In the preceding month a Council of Trade had been established. A few months later, in May, 1661, twelve Privy Councillors were appointed to be a "Committee touching the settlement of New England." But no immediate authority appears to have been exercised by this committee.4
The natural anxiety consequent upon the condition of public affairs at
1 A few articles were excepted from the general law. Palfrey, New England, ii. 444, 445.
Mass. Col. Rec. IV. (ii.) 31, 32.
3 Hazard, Coll., i. 533, 633.
+ l'alfrey, as above, p. 444.
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
this time led the colonial authorities to reflect upon their own rights and duties. As the session of the General Court in May, 1661, was drawing to a close, a committee consisting of twelve of the principal laymen and clergy- men was appointed to take into consideration "the present condition of our affairs." They desired " seriously to discuss, and rightly to understand, our liberty and duty, thereby to beget unity amongst ourselves in the due observance of obedience and fidelity unto the authority of England and our own just privileges." At a special meeting of the General Court, June 10, this committee made a report which was "allowed and approved." This remarkable paper, signed and probably written by Thomas Danforth, is a sort of declaration of rights and an acknowledgment of duties. As an exposition of those rights, and as showing the reliance placed upon their charter, it is worthy of a place here.
THE COURT'S DECLARATION OF THEIR RIGHTS BY CHARTER, JUNE 10, 1661.
" First, Concerning our Liberties :
" I. We conceive the patent (under God), to be the first and main foundation of our civil polity here, by a governor and company, according as is therein expressed.
" 2. The governor and company are, by the patent, a body politic in fact and name.
" 3. This body politic is vested with power to make freemen.
" 4. These freemen have power to choose annually a governor, deputy-governor, assistants, and their select representatives or deputies.
" 5. This government hath also power to set up all sorts of officers, as well superior as inferior, and point out their power and places.
"6. The governor, deputy-governor, assistants, and select representatives or depu- ties have full power and authority, both legislative and executive, for the government of all the people here, whether inhabitants or strangers, both concerning ecclesiastical and civil, without appeal, excepting law or laws repugnant to the laws of England.
" 7. This government is privileged, by all fitting means (yea, if need be by force of arms), to defend themselves, both by land and sea, against all such person or persons as shall, at any time, attempt or enterprise the destruction, invasion, detri- ment, or annoyance of this Plantation, or the inhabitants therein, besides other privileges, mentioned in the patent, not here expressed.
" 8. We conceive any imposition prejudicial to the country, contrary to any just law of ours, not repugnant to the laws of England, to be an infringement of our right.
" Second, Concerning our duties of allegiance to our Sovereign Lord the King: "T. We ought to uphold, and to our power maintain, this place as of right belonging to our Sovereign Lord the King, as holden of his Majesty's manor of East Greenwich, and not to subject the same to any foreign prince or potentate whatsoever.
" 2. We ought to endeavor the preservation of his Majesty's royal person, realms, and dominions, and, so far as lieth in us, to discover and prevent all plots and con- spiracies against the same.
" 3. We ought to seek the peace and prosperity of our king and nation, by a faith- ful discharge in the governing of this people committed to our care.
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THE CHARTER OF KING CHARLES THE FIRST.
" First. By punishing all such crimes (being breaches of the first or second table) as are committed against the peace of our Sovereign Lord the King, his royal crown and dignity.
"Second. In propagating the Gospel, defending and upholding the true Christian or Protestant religion, according to the faith given by our Lord Christ in his Word : our dread sovereign being styled, 'Defender of the Faith.'
"The premises considered, it may well stand with the loyalty and obedience of such subjects as are thus privileged by their rightful sovereign (for himself, his heirs, and successors forever) as cause shall require, to plead with their prince against all such as shall at any time endeavor the violation of their privileges.
"We further judge that the warrant and letter from the King's Majesty for the apprehending of Colonel Whalley and Colonel Goffe ought to be diligently and faithfully executed by the authority of this country.1
"And also that the General Court may do safely to declare, that in case, for the future, any legally obnoxious, and flying from the civil justice of the state of England, shall come over to these parts, they may not here expect shelter." 2
The formal proclaiming of the restored king had been deferred until August, 1661, fifteen months after his accession, when it was ordered by the Court that he be proclaimed in Boston; and the following form, selected from among several proposed, was adopted, -
" Forasmuch as Charles the Second is undoubted King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, and all other his Majesty's territories and dominions thereunto belonging, and hath been sometimes since lawfully proclaimed and crowned accordingly, we therefore do, as in duty we are bound, own and acknowledge him to be our Sovereign Lord and King, and do therefore hereby proclaim and declare his said Majesty, Charles the Second, to be lawful King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, and all other the territories and dominions thereunto belonging." 3
An address to the King, likewise agreed to at the same time, if not sent, is preserved by Hutchinson.+ It is conceived and executed in bad taste, its rhetoric being beyond redemption. £ The tone was sufficiently submissive to satisfy the vanity of the most arbitrary monarch.
Hutchinson says that intelligence arrived about this time of further com- plaints against the Colony, and that orders were received from the King that persons should be sent over to make answer. That historian may have had papers not now on file. It is certain that, at the meeting of the General Court in November, the question of sending agents and providing money to defray the expenses of the mission was considered, and was referred to the next Court. A special session was called for December, at which it was re- solved to send Mr. Bradstreet and Mr. Norton, with instructions to represent the Colony as his Majesty's loyal and obedient subjects, to endeavor to take off all scandal and objections, and to understand his Majesty's apprehen- sions concerning them. A humble petition and address to the King was prepared to accompany the agents, praying his Majesty to incline his royal
1 Hutchinson, History, i. 331, prints this "Court." 3 Ibid. p. 31.
2 Mass. Colony Records, IV. (ii.) 25, 26.
VOL. I .- 45.
4 Papers, p. 341.
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
car unto the persons herewith sent, and imploring his " gracious confirma- tion of our patent granted by your royal predecessor of famous memory." Letters were also written to the Earl of Manchester, Viscount Say and Sele, and the Earl of Clarendon.
Mr. Bradstreet and Mr. Norton engaged in this service with great reluc- tance, as the mission was regarded by them as a delicate one, attended with heavy responsibilities. Mr. Norton had a special reluctance to serve. The agents feared that they might be detained as hostages for the good behavior of their constituents. A committee was appointed to make all the necessary arrangements, including the preparation of instructions. They met at the "Anchor Tavern in Boston," having ten sessions in five weeks; and though some members of the Committee, including the Governor, Mr. Endicott, and Deputy-Governor, Mr. Bellingham, were so averse to the measure that they failed to attend the meetings, the business was finally arranged, and the agents sailed February 11, 1662-63.1
It has been remarked, as the occasion of some surprise, that the Colony, in a period so critical in their affairs, should have repeated an act calculated to give high offence in England. Soon after the agents had sailed, and before any tidings of them could have been received, the General Court passed an order for issuing a new coin of "two-penny pieces of silver." This coin continued to be struck for a long time, all the pieces being stamped with the date of the year of the first issue, as in the case of the carlier issue.2
The reception of the agents in England was far more favorable than they had dared to hope. In London they were confronted by some of the enemies of the Colony, particularly by the Quakers, who had little power to annoy them. Their stay in England was short, and they returned the next fall, -arriving September 3, -with a gracious letter from the King, bearing date June 28, 1662, "part of which cheered the hearts of the country." He told the authorities of Massachusetts that their Address to him had been very acceptable; that he received them into his gracious protection ; confirmed the patent and charter heretofore granted to them,
1 Hutchinson, Papers, PP. 345-370.
2 | The first coining had taken place in 1652, when, by order of the Court, shillings, sixpences, and threepences were to be struck to take the place of " paper bills, very subject to be lost, John Hule rent, or counterfeited," and John Hull, a sil- versmith, and Robert Sanderson were placed in charge of the minting, llull being the mint- master. Hull lived till 1683, and left a will, which is abstracted in Drake's Boston, pp. 329, 450. His daughter Ilannah, of whom the old story goes that he gave her on her marriage a settlement in pine-tree shillings equal to her weight, was the wife of the famous Judge Sewall, whose Diary (5 Mass. Hist. Coll , v.), and that
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