USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > The story of Essex County, Volume II > Part 22
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It might be pointed out that in all of this the people of Massachu- setts really showed a more tolerant, and perhaps more Christian, spirit than did the founder of Rhode Island. But now they lost patience. They granted to him and to his church in Salem till the next General Court to think things over. If at that time he still main- tained these doctrines, he was to be removed.
Now it was just at this time that the town of Salem petitioned the General Court for a grant of land at Marblehead Neck. The defense of Williams by Endecott and other Salem men was punished by the court's refusing the petition-a refusal which hit hard at the practical natures of the Puritan founders of the wealth of Essex County. Salem objected and wrote letters to the other churches, protesting; but their delegates were refused admittance to the General Court till they had acknowledged their fault in vilifying the magistrates. Being business men-not men of God-they acknowledged their fault; but unfortu- nately for us history does not tell whether or not they were rewarded with Marblehead Neck. Williams, however, demanded that his par- ish sever its relations with the ungodly, meaning the other churches of the Commonwealth whose ideas differed from his and whose govern- ments were less strictly Congregationalist. He refused to have com-
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munion with his own church until they had severed their relations with the other churches. He even went so far, it is said, to refuse to take his meals with his own wife and children, who had continued to take communion with his parishioners. History does not tell us, but it is probably fairly safe to assume, however, that he allowed his wife to continue cooking for him, no doubt humoring her, a member of the weaker sex, for whom Christanity had its social as well as its moral niceties.
But Roger Williams had gone too far, and when he defied the Court in September, 1635, the Salem church disclaimed his errors, and he was ordered to quit the Colony within six weeks. Even this did not quiet him; so Captain Underhill was directed to go to Salem to seize him and to send him to England. On his arrival in Salem, however, he found that Williams had been gone three days-and no one knew whither.
Williams took with him his followers and founded his Colony, and changed his own nature to a great degree. Occasionally the old pugnacity flared up-even in Rhode Island-but it would soon quiet down, and on the whole Williams' colony was free from internal con- troversy. In Rhode Island he did good work among the Indians. And, strangely enough, he established most amicable relations with Massachusetts -- perhaps by this time considering her inhabitants sav- ages, whom he must treat with the same patience and kindness that he exhibited towards the redskins.
It is difficult to form a just estimate on Williams. He did have a conscience; of that we are sure. And he must have had a very strong personality, for he did have a considerable following, among whom were men like John Endecott. In the face of Boston opposition Salem stood by him for as long as it could.
But Williams was a disturber of the peace, a difficult person to get on with, and quite likely to involve the Colony in trouble with England; and however sincere, saintly, and learned he may have been, the Colony was probably safer without him. That he did have a fol- lowing of importance, however, is attested to by the fact that he drew away after him a considerable number of useful people who helped build up Rhode Island.
As has been stated, the historical error with regard to Williams appears to lie in attributing to the brilliant but unstable and often
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intolerant and bigoted Williams of 1635 the toleration and breadth of view which undoubtedly characterized the Williams of 1650. For in 1635 he was like many another who denounces the bigotry and narrow-mindedness of his associates. He would have done better to have forgotten the mote in his brother's eye and to have paid more attention to the beam in his own. By 1650, however, he had been "purified and clarified by adversity," and was a much more tolerant human being-a wiser, and we hope not too much a sadder, man. In 1635 he was the leader of an irresponsible and infant minority. In 1650 he was the leader of an established majority whose responsibility it was to govern a colony and to keep the peace within its own bounds and with its neighbors.
No one would wish, really, to belittle the credit that is due Wil- liams for overlooking the friction between him and the churches and governments of both Plymouth and the Bay Colony, and for main- taining friendly relations with them in after years; but it is a fair conclusion that in 1635 Roger Williams was a contentious person who could get along in no colony but his own, and that the magistrates were wise and right in ordering his removal.
Next in our list of Essex County statesmen is Simon Bradstreet, who touched the shores of Essex in 1630, along with Winthrop and Dudley, but who immediately thought better of it and established his house in that part of Cambridge which later became Harvard Square. In 1635, however, the Bradstreets moved to Ipswich, and in 1644 they moved to Andover, always, it may be noted, carefully keeping within the boundaries of Essex County-particularly cautious, of course, after their one misstep into the swamps about Harvard Square and Middlesex County. And at the age of seventy-three, when he seems to have thrown all caution to the four winds and to have taken unto himself a second wife, he still was canny enough to stay within Essex County, for he moved to the house of his second wife in Salem, and there lived till his death in 1697 at the age of ninety-three.
Simon Bradstreet was the son of a clergyman at Horbling near Boston in Lincolnshire, England. He was brought up among gentle- men of cultivation. While Simon was attending the Horbling Gram- mar School, his father died. He seems to have lived for a while with the families of the Countess of Lincoln and of the Countess of War- wick. Although his father's death interrupted his formal education,
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it did not stop it, for he matriculated at Cambridge, and received his bachelor's degree and later his master's degree from Emmanuel College.
Thomas Dudley, steward to the Earl of Lincoln, became his patron, and Bradstreet succeeded Dudley as steward to Lincoln when Dudley moved to Boston, England. Later he was called into the service of the Countess of Warwick. Bradstreet promptly fell in love with Dudley's daughter, Anne, and married her a very short time after she arose from bed after smallpox. The marriage was a most happy one. The couple were devoted to each other, and their devotion has been immortalized by Anne Bradstreet's poetry :
"If ever two were one then surely we."
When Dudley came to Massachusetts in 1630, Bradstreet and his wife came with him, and as has been pointed out, lived in Cam- bridge till 1635. When Ipswich was settled, Thomas Dudley, Simon Bradstreet, and their families were the leading inhabitants. The Bradstreets lived there till 1644. And in 1638 the General Court gave license to Bradstreet and others for a plantation at Merrimac, which was the beginning of Andover. It was there, in 1644, that the Bradstreets built their large and hospitable house, the admi- ration of all the gentlemen of culture in the Commonwealth. The Bradstreet home was one of the earliest houses in the county that had that atmosphere of education and refinement which later was so characteristic of the homes of Essex County and some of its neigh- bors. And it was there, in 1672, after forty years of married life, that Anne Bradstreet died and was buried. And it is a tribute to her that Simon Bradstreet did not marry again for four years-very nearly establishing an all-time Puritan record-and that when he did marry a second time, it was probably because the Governor-elect needed a housekeeper and a hostess.
Simon Bradstreet was an Assistant from 1630 to 1678; he was a member of that chamber of the General Court which was finally called the Senate as the result of the division of the court over the controversy on Captain Keayne and Mrs. Sherman's pig; he was Governor, Deputy Governor, one time Secretary of the Colony, and its agent in London in a critical period.
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In 1642 Simon Bradstreet with others was appointed a member of the commission from Massachusetts which was responsible for the formation of the New England Confederacy-"The United Colonies of New England"-which did notable work in defense in King Philip's War, and which did a lot towards training people to think in terms of united effort.
Early Massachusetts history concerns itself with a struggle between oligarchy and a rising sentiment for democracy. Simon Bradstreet was by birth, education, and position naturally a member of that ruling few who governed New England in its early days, but he was one of those who counseled moderation, on the whole, and who often advised compromise which led to the growth of a more uni- versal suffrage.
Bradstreet was a member of the court which banished Anne Hutchinson, but he did it because he felt that peace in the Colony required that the tenets of the Puritan faith and its ministers remain insured against attack. In this he was perhaps short-sighted, but he was, after all, a member of an older and passing school of philosophers.
As a result of Endecott's rigid persecution against the Quakers, Charles II became angry, for there was a time when his attitude towards them was lenient. Charles II threatened revocation of the charter, and Bradstreet and the Reverend John Norton were sent to England in 1662 to speak for the colonists. Their mission was suc- cessful in that the charter was not revoked at that time, but they brought home such instructions from the King to the clergy that both agents were unpopular here for a long time. Norton was supposed to have died broken-hearted at his unpopularity, but Bradstreet bore it with composure and philosophy.
Bradstreet was not Governor during the witchcraft trials in Salem, and it is known that he with a few others kept their sanity well enough to protest strongly against such horrible proceedings.
In the contest between Crown and Colony, in 1663, Bradstreet was too far-seeing not to realize that complete opposition to the royal wishes would get the Colony nowhere. His advice was not taken, however, and the Colony lost its charter in 1684. Although Brad- street proved right, of course, his popularity was not increased thereby. By the end of his life, however, his services in this contest were appreciated. Cotton Mather called him "The Nestor of New England" and "The Father of His Country."
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Bradstreet was Governor when the charter was revoked, and so, of course, gave way to Joseph Dudley and Sir Edmund Andros. Under Andros Massachusetts government was a despotism, and when on April 4, 1689, news came to Boston that the Prince of Orange had landed in England, the colonists were ready to revolt. No one knew with what success the Prince of Orange had met, but Bradstreet, now no longer advising moderation, put himself at the head of revolt. And so at the age of eighty-seven he signed the proclamation which was a declaration of independence, and on April 19, 1689, he marched at the head of the militia up King Street to the old State House.
"All the cry was against Andros. The castle was taken; the frigate was mastered; the fortifications occupied.
"Once more Massachusetts assembled in general court, and the old man, whose blood could still tingle at wrong, was called again to the chair of state."
Although Bradstreet has been called a figurehead in this revolt, no public service brought him more honor. Hawthorne has immor- talized the incident in "The Gray Champion." And as for his being a figurehead, he was a forceful one. He stands with George Wash- ington as the only two men who ever kicked out a Governor of Mas- sachusetts and sent him packing home to England.
General Pew has said:
"This is an intimation that Bradstreet was used as scenery, to give respectability to this revolution. Even so, when Gov- ernor Andros looked over the palisades of his fortification on Fort Hill and saw the guns of his captured shore battery trained on his stronghold, he realized that Bradstreet behind those guns was scenery more persuasive than respectable."
As a matter of fact, it should be pointed out that in the next two years Bradstreet made a very active Governor, warring with Indians in Maine, capturing Port Royal, and extending the northern boundary of Massachusetts to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. He fitted out an expe- dition to Quebec, which failed through lack of cooperation from Albany, and he satisfied the clamors of the unpaid soldiers with an issue of paper money. And he remained calm and unperturbed before
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a clergy clamoring for a restoration of former conditions under a new charter.
At the age of ninety he retired from public office, and three years later he died :
"Simon Bradstreet, Gentleman and Soldier, Senator in the Colony of Massachusetts from 1630 to 1673. Then, until 1679, Deputy Governor, and finally, until 1686, Governor of the Colony by the united and unchanging vote of the people. In judgment, he was as far-sighted as Lynceus. Wealth and honor had for him no allurement. He kept an even balance between the authority of the king and the liberty of the peo- ple. Of temperate judgment in religion, of blameless life, he overcame the world and left it on March 27, 1697, in the third year of King William, the 9th month, and the 94th year of his age."
It was under Governor Andros, in 1687, that the famous Essex Revolt occurred. Andros realized along with most of the other think- ing people of the day that his government needed an elected assembly, but the King made no provision for such an assembly. Andros, there- fore, had to levy taxes only with the advice and consent of a majority of his Council. The people had no voice-taxation, therefore, with- out representation.
On March 1, 1687, Andros presented to his Council a general bill of taxation which embodied many older ones. The Council seems to have debated the issue at length, and after two days the bill was passed. Some of the members of the Council, however, claimed years later that some votes were not counted and that others refused to vote, preferring to sulk.
The attempt to levy this tax was met with immediate resistance in Essex County, particularly in Ipswich. The minister, John Wise, drew up a protest which many men of Ipswich signed. The document protested the fact of taxation without representation, protested that their liberties as Englishmen had been infringed upon, and said that the undersigned would refuse to pay any tax not levied by an elected assembly.
Twenty-eight of these men were immediately arrested, but most of them were as immediately let go. Six of them, however, were
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denied writ of habeas corpus, thrown into prison at Boston, and brought to trial before Dudley, the presiding judge, and a jury that Wise claimed was decidedly packed. The offenders were found guilty, were fined £185 apiece, and were made to pay heavy court fees. Wise was suspended from his ministerial functions.
The seventeenth century in Massachusetts marks the rise of the town government, an institution of New England that is notably famous. These town governments had never had legal standing as corporations, but they had had assigned to them many important func- tions in local government. And above all they were assemblies which fostered a growing democracy. Upon the revocation of the char- ter, the town government ceased even to have a political standing ; but the Andros régime, nevertheless, allowed them to continue func- tioning much as they had done before. This marks a certain liberal- ism in Andros, unquestionably. But as a result of the Essex Revolt the Council passed a law limiting town meetings to one a year for the purpose of electing local officers. It is easy enough to see that this was a serious blow to what has been considered the root and founda- tion of popular government in the Colony.
Shortly after the Essex Revolt came an episode in Essex County that has made her name ring down through the annals of American history in not very complimentary terms. The episode, of course, was that of witchcraft in Salem. The episode is an important point, too, in this particular chapter, for it marks one of the last times that Essex County history is Massachusetts history, is American history. From this point on the political history of Essex County merges itself more and more into the larger issues of the State and Nation. To study Essex County in detail before 1693 is to study in detail some of the major events of the Colony. After 1693 to study Essex County history in detail is, with few exceptions, to study triviality, except as one studies county history in relation to State and Nation.
And Salem witchcraft is an important marker in this chapter for another reason. It defines the end of one political era and the begin- ning of another. For because of the discreditable part taken by some of the clergy, such as Cotton Mather and Samuel Parris, the Estab- lished Church came out of the affair rather the worse for wear. This does not mean that religion ceased to be a factor in Massachusetts pol- itics after 1693. On the contrary the Congregational Church was the
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privileged church right up to 1812. But witchcraft was a warning knell for the church, and 1693 marks the beginning of the decline of the power of the clergy in the politics of Massachusetts. Robert Calef dealt a staggering blow.
The full account of Salem Witchcraft is treated at length else- where in this history, and so only a bare outline is needed here.
That witchcraft existed in the world before it broke out in Salem is, of course, taken for granted. But there had been few English executions in the seventeenth century. What started it in Salem is hard to say ; but it undoubtedly was influenced, at least in part, by the writings of the Mathers, father and son.
As far back as 1681 many of the clergy about Boston became interested in witchcraft and similar delusions. They set about to investigate the subject from what they considered a scientific angle. Shortly after, Increase Mather, in his "An Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providence," published in Boston in 1684, recited numerous cases of "witchcraft and possession" which had been observed, and pointed out the symptoms by which the Devil might be recognized. Mather's son, Cotton Mather, was under the delusion that it was his personal job to free his people from the "plot of the Devil against New England," and in his hands ideas became dangerous.
It may be imagined, therefore, that the clergy of the time were interested in the subject and preached about it in their own peculiarly vivid way to an emotional people. And so the subject was in the air. And very likely the children, who were to prove such important fac- tors in the trials, fell under the spell first, being most sensitive, most highly strung, most imaginative, and least skeptical, least balanced, least courageous.
One of the first cases of witchcraft broke out in Salem Village (Danvers) in 1692 in the home of the Reverend Samuel Parris, min- ister. Acting upon the testimony of young girls, he had the nurse of his own household, a West Indian woman, brought to trial. This started things. Parris himself became fanatical in ferreting out demons. The Reverend Noyes, of Salem, joined with enthusiasm in the chase. Cotton Mather joined in and became the leader of all. And in less than a year twenty innocent people had lost their lives. Essex County sometimes boasts that, after all, only one was killed by
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torture-that one being pressed to death between weights over a period of a few days-none was submitted to trial by fire, and few were submitted to trial by water. But it is a doubtful boast. Twenty innocent victims hanged is a record which rather calls for silence from the defenders of the Puritan virtues.
The trials were held in Salem and were a travesty on justice. They opened when the General Court was not in session, and so when Governor Phips arrived from England in May and found one hun- dred witches in prison, he took the advice of Mather and appointed an illegal court, presided over by his Deputy Governor, "the savagely bigoted Stoughton." By the time the General Court again convened, things were in such a state that many members of some of the leading families of Essex County were awaiting trial-lucky, really, to have escaped trial in Stoughton's court with a packed and hysterical jury. The General Court disbanded Stoughton's court and failed to appoint another. They released over one hundred witches still in jail. And shortly after that Robert Calef wrote a stinging attack on Cotton Mather, over the later case in Boston of Margaret Rule, and thor- oughly discredited Mather and the cause of witchcraft.
One of the peculiarities of the trials was that the more a person denied his guilt the more certain were the judges that he was a witch uttering blasphemies, and the more certain was he of being hanged. Full confession of guilt, on the other hand, was met by the release of the guilty ones. The witches at Andover soon caught on to this fact, and one by one they got up and confessed their guilt. And one by one they were released, after having first named some one else for having put the Devil into them. That person, in turn, was called to trial; and he, in turn, passed the blame to some- body else. Andover may be proud, incidentally, that her two clergy- men were vehement in their denunciation of the bigotry.
The episode was a farce-but a tragic one. And as has been stated, it marked the beginning of the end of ministerial influence. Mr. James Truslow Adams has said, in his "Founding of New England" :
. . .. Courageous laymen, like Thomas Brattle and Robert Calef, both merchants, exerted their influence against the delusion; and when Mather tried to start another alarm in Boston, less than a year after the last execution in Salem,
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public opinion was arrayed solidly against him. In 1700 Calef's book in answer to Mather's 'Wonders of the Invisible World' was printed in London and quickly imported into the Colony. Though the rage of the Mathers, father and son, was unbounded, their cause had been thoroughly discredited, and their day was past. They belonged, in reality, to the sixteenth century, while Calef, the merchant, defending the cause of intellectual freedom with no weapon but that of com- mon sense, belonged to the eighteenth, the dawn of which was now at hand.
"It was the voice of that century to which people were now to hearken. Thenceforth, happily for itself as well as for America, the church was to be unable to rely either upon political power or upon blind fanaticism to uphold its leader- ship-a leadership which now, perforce, took on a nobler form. The work of the founders was over. In the extension of their influence throughout the country, wherever we find groups of settlers from the New England States, we find, indeed the church, the common school, and the town meeting; but it is a liberalized church, a non-sectarian school, and a town meeting in which the citizen's vote is not dependent upon the possession of any peculiar theological belief."
As has been stated, the approach to a study of the political history of Essex County after 1700 must of necessity be quite different from the approach to a study of Essex County before 1700. Before 1700 the political events of Essex County were of national significance. After 1700 there are fewer and fewer incidents of local politics that can be truly cited with universal appeal. And so with these few exceptions the political history of Essex County must now be studied from a general point of view. The later greatness of Essex County lies in the greatness of her economic and social contribution to Mas- sachusetts and to America. And her greatness also lies in the politi- cal contribution she has offered to the State and to the Nation through the lives of her more famous sons.
Before proceeding with this general study, however, it is inter- esting to look at the few exceptions to the rule about purely local politics. For Essex County has contributed her fair share of local
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news to the headlines of nationally read newspapers. Among the most interesting of these events are the Essex Result of 1778, the Essex Junto of the early nineteenth century, 1789-18II, the Gerry- mander of 1811, and the Newburyport's phenomenon of the 1920's, "Bossy" Gillis.
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