History of Rockingham County, New Hampshire and representative citizens, Part 13

Author: Hazlett, Charles A
Publication date: 1915
Publisher: Chicago : Richmond-Arnold
Number of Pages: 1390

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This is met by a counter petition from Mason, requesting all the acts of the governor and company of the Massachusetts Bay to be declared void and illegal, and that "the petitioner may not be any longer kept out of his inheritance by the continuance and practices of evill minded men."

After Cranfield assumed the government here and had looked into this disturbing element, we find him writing that "Mr. Mason hath much mis- represented ye whole matter, both as to ye place and people. * *

* In- stead of being ready to own Mr. Mason as their Proprietor, they are very

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slow to admit of any person except their Sovereign Lord, the King, to be their Lord Proprietor." In the same paper he adds, "Touching Ecclesiastical Matters, the attempting to settle ye way of ye Church of England, I per- ceive willbe very grievous to the people, However, Mr. Mason asserted yt their Inclinations were mch yt way. I have observed them to be very dili- gent and devout in attending on yt mode of worship wch they have been brought up in, and hath been so long settled among them, and seem to be very tenacious of it, and am very thankful for His Majties gracious In- dulgence in those matters."

In 1691, Robert Tufton Mason, to whom the estate of his brother, John Tufton Mason, had descended, sold his whole claim in the province of New Hampshire to a merchant in London, Samuel Allen, for the sum of seven hundred and fifty pounds, a paltry sum after the statements of expenditures and the prosperity of the colony, or a proof that the confidence in his legal claim or the hope of recovering anything had nearly vanished. One of the chief reasons for Usher's unpopularity was his attempt immediately upon arriving to secure into his own possession all the papers relating to the Mason claims. For some time, through the determined opposition of Pickering, a man very prominent in the early history of the settlement in both church and state, he was prevented, and at last after succeeding, and after many discussions and legal attempts, a peaceful solution of the long standing contention was about reached when Allen died and his son carried on the strife. Again, in 1746, John Tufton Mason, still claiming a title to the realm of New Hampshire, sold it in fifteen shares to twelve persons prominent in the province, who at once released to all the towns the lands which came under the old grants, and Mason's claim forever fell asleep. Two or three conclusions are evident from a careful review of the whole matter,-that Mason was not the original founder of this colony, but the one who carried on the original settlement by Thomson to a successful issue ; that he was one who by a long and generous interest showed his unwearied faith in its final success; that he doubtless spent large sums upon this colony without any encouraging returns ; that after the settlement was by his heirs for a long time abandoned there is every reason to suppose the wages of his colonists and their labors to build up the province fairly entitled them to most of the possessions here, and that most of the claims made by succeed- ing generations of heirs were manifestly exorbitant and unjust. But, on the contrary, when in "Notes on an Indenture of David Thomson and others," recently recovered among the papers of the Winthrop family, it is said, "New Hampshire has but little cause to cherish his ( Mason's) memory ; and he would probably have been forgotten but for the accidental revival of his name by the claims of his heirs, who used them as an instrument to annoy and perplex the settlers on the soil, who had acquired a right to their homesteads and farms by long undisturbed possession," we think we find here the old spirit of the Massachusetts to belittle the character of the settlers at the Piscataqua, for there is no reason to suppose that Mason was not an honorable, loyal, generous, and good man.

Theological Movements .- The change in the Piscataqua from Episco- pacy to Puritanism, was made during one of the most excited ecclesiastical periods in history.

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The turbulence and bitter personalities which filled all England, both in church and state, are equaled but two or three times in history.

Now it was at the very culmination of these troubles that our settle- ments were made, the Bay Colony by the Puritans, Maine and New Hamp- shire, the Piscataqua by the adherents of the Established Churches. The first chapel on Pleasant Street was built, and Richard Gibson, the first min- ister of the Piscataqua parish, preached in it the very year ( 1638) that Episcopacy was abolished in England, and the glebe with its chapel and parsonage was given by the inhabitants to the wardens and their successors forever, just on the eve of the civil war in England. Can anyone at all acquainted with the bitterness of party feeling, either in politics or theology, fail to see a sufficient explanation of the constantly repeated charges against the Piscataqua settlement that it was begun and carried on simply in the interests of trade, and by men who had no religion, for to the Puritans Episcopacy was no religion? On the other hand, does not the same height of party feeling lead us to suppose that the supporters of the Established Church at this point did everything with reference to its perpetuity, if for no other reason because it was, even though weak, an open testimony to their cause in the very face of Puritanisin? No one can wish to question the purity of life or the praiseworthy sacrifices of many of the Puritans, or that the first settlement of the Plymouth Colony was made singly in the interests of religious liberty ; but the spirit of colonization at that time per- vaded all classes about alike, and the character of the various settlements soon became much the same.

The settlements along the Maine coast and at Piscataqua were strictly in the interests of the Established Church; and without making any claims for the special godliness of their members, the testimony is ample that though the kind of religion was different from the Bay Colony, there was just as much interest in the kind. When the expedition under Popham reached the Maine coast in 1607, as soon as they land they listen to a sermon from their preacher, Richard Seymour, and as soon as they dis- embark they build a church.

It is easy to see, therefore, that all the heat of ecclesiastical troubles in the old country was reproduced in these neighboring settlements. The ques- tion then arises, How did the Episcopal parish here pass so rapidly and completely under the control of the Puritans? The solution is not afar. In the first place, as in the Bay Colony some elements of Episcopacy appear, so there were doubtless some of Puritanism already here from the begin- ning. Next, with the greater influence and fear of the Massachusetts colony, all her efforts were directed towards hastening the supremacy of Puritanism. We find a record that a merchant of London writes to John Winthrop, Jr., "there are honest men about to buye out the Bristoll men's plantations on Piscataqua, and doe propose to plant there five hundred poor people:" and a little later Bristol merchants who had bought the patents of Edward Hilton sell them to purchasers by the encouragement of Massachusetts, "in respect they feared some ill neighborhood from them;" whereupon one of the Puri- tan historians writes, "As these new proprietors were of Puritan preferences and principles, such a consideration must have been very welcome to the

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Bay authorities, who naturally wished to be surrounded by those who labored for the same great cause of reformation."

To the ecclesiastical enmity which separated the colonies at the Bay and at the Piscataqua there must be added a political animosity also, arising from the feeling on the part of some that the Bay Colony had assumed here a jurisdiction which never justly belonged to it, a feeling which seems to have remained deep-seated and active even to the time of the appointment of the first governor of the separate province of New Hampshire.

In 1664 the king appointed commissioners to visit all these colonies and collect testimony in regard to the many complaints which had reached the court. The appointment of it created great opposition by the Bay Colony, and great consternation at the Piscataqua. The religious and political dif- ferences ran so high that the commissioners found hard work and ill treat- ment awaiting them. John and Richard Cutt, who seem to be the leading selectmen of Portsmouth, sent a messenger post-haste to Boston for advice, saying that although "our people the five to one are in their hearts for the Bay, yet they have fears that the king's commissioners will gradually take advantage upon us by secret seducing the ignorant and ill affected, then will openly prevail with the rest;" but when the commissioners came and held their meeting at Portsmouth, one Henry Sherborne (the same who was a church warden), when it was demanded who would be under the immediate government of the king and renounce the Massachusetts, "the sayd Henry Sherborn sayd, 'one and all for the King,' or in words to that effect."

Such are the incidents which reveal to an impartial consideration the true condition of the colony, its various divisions, its theological and political excitement, and its personal animosities.

In the light of this historical sketch we find then a far safer and more sufficient explanation of the early matters of our settlement than it has been customary to give. All the charges that it was made only in the in- terests of trade, and that it was wholly irreligious, or as Winthrop says, that it was the usual manner (some of them) of the colonists here to coun- tenance all such lewd persons as fled from the Bay here, as if our settlement was composed of that class of persons, fall to the ground. The accusation has the common sound and taint of the party feeling which ran at that time so high. Many early settlers both at the Bay and here were of the highest class of colonists who ever left a mother-country, and many were of that restless nature moved by the numberless motives which fill all new settlements. As human beings they were pretty much the same, as wor- shipers they were widely apart and greatly embittered against each other, but the settlement at the Piscataqua I have satisfactorily shown was planned and supported enthusiastically in the interests of Episcopacy.

In the light of this historical review we find the only true explanation of another point which has been as steadily misunderstood or misrepresented. If the first parish and church were Episcopal, how is it that all the services after the departure of Gibson were by Puritan ministers, and that the chapel, parsonage, glebe land, and all the appointments for public worship were transformed with seemingly so little public or long-continued opposition to the Puritans ?

FRANK W.

FIRST CHURCH IN EXETER, N. H.

THE ATHENAEUM, 1803; PORTSMOUTH

OLD GARRISON HOUSE, EXETER, N. H.

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In the first place we must give up all those suggestions which, if they did not show themselves as too partisan, would be too absurd, such as that the forms of the deed were expressed according to the Church of England, and appropriate church terms were used because no other were at hand; that the deed was purposely drawn so as to leave the form of worship to be decided from time to time. Would anybody have reasoned thus if a Catholic priest had been chosen, or the glebe land come under the Romanists' patronage, or that the adherents of the Established Church, in assenting to the worship they were powerless to prevent, did ever see in the change any perversion of the original intention and employment of the gift? We all well know that churches are never thus indifferently founded, and that the denominational spirit is not so readily transferred, and does not so readily die out. If we could ask Walford and Sherborne, the first wardens, or any of the little congregation of churchmen who, in that little log chapel on Pleasant Street, saw the Puritan minister, Parker, officiate in the winter of 1642 without robes, and without the Book of Common Prayer, whether there was in that any perversion of the provisions for the maintenance of a church, can there be any doubt what their reply would be?

The parish had been gathered, the chapel and parsonage built, and the glebe land set apart with no other thought than that the worship according to the Established Church of England would be perpetual in the Piscataqua settlement, but the proprietors and supporters of the settlement died, and their estates came into new hands. Some of the leading churchmen of the colony went elsewhere or died, and of course many of the settlers were as willing to support the worship of one church as another, and some were earnest for Puritanism. The Bay Colony, as we have seen, was far more populous and prosperous, and even reached as far as England to see that their neighboring settlers were of the same faith. The jurisdiction of Massachusetts was established over the Piscataqua settlement just at that time, and the very year the chapel was built Episcopacy was abolished in England. If all the records which a sectarian zeal made way with were extant, we should doubtless find more open opposition to the rule and wor- ship of the Puritans than we do, but the Episcopalians could no longer support public services, and their numbers were soon almost lost in the rapid increase of Puritans. In secret, without a doubt, they trusted that the Established Church would soon be triumphant, the combination with Massachusetts be dissolved, and the king confirm to them all the rights of their chapel and worship. That time never came. It remained for them to worship in their own chapel under other forms or to have no public worship at all. They did the former, and even Sherborne himself became much interested in subsequent ministrations of the South Parish, and in the build- ing of the Second Church.

The Puritans, too, could not as I see have done or been expected to do otherwise. There was the unused chapel and parsonage and glebe land ; perhaps no one thought of objecting to their worshiping in it. When Sunday came round, as a company of travelers in distant lands and of divers faiths, they were all glad of some kind of worship, and went to what they had. As to their appropriating it as their own thereafter. that was what either side

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was doing to the other whenever it could during that long period of eccle- siastical anarchy, and justice from one bitterly excited sect towards another is something which is still remanded to a Sunday's meditation rather than to the consideration of a parish meeting.

I find not so much fault with what the Puritans did at the time as their explanations of it afterwards, when a calmer survey of history, or a little meditation upon the golden rule, ought to have taught them better, not so much with what they did in the heat of theological warfare as what they attempted to justify in the calm of Christian worship.

With the departure of Gibson in 1642 the public services of Episcopacy in the Piscataqua settlement came to an end. We shall find that it was almost precisely a century before they were again opened, but not so as to have any historical associations with the first parish and chapel of their faith on Pleasant Street; all the worshipers there had become a part of the South Parish, and yet it is but a fair concession to the tenacity with which we know persons hold to their inherited or adopted faith to regard it as quite probable that during that century Episcopacy did not quite die out among the descendants of the early worshipers.

The most important incidents in the recorded history of this settlement now follow for a time the two or three principal pastorates. Joshua Moodey began his ministrations in the year 1658, and the next year was regularly settled as the minister of the town. He was born in Wales in 1632, and brought by his father to this country the following year. The family lived for a time at Ipswich, and removed to Newbury in 1635. Mr. Moodey graduated at Harvard in 1653, and began the study of theology. He preached in the new meeting-house in Portsmouth with so much approval that a sub- scription was taken for his maintenance for a year, and then he was called to be the minister, yet such was the division of sentiment on account of Puritanism and Episcopacy, preventing any permanent and harmonious action, that he was minister of the town for twelve years before a church, meaning thereby a body of communicants, was gathered. The Episcopal element, though small, was so important and influential that in regard to all matters pertaining to the minister's support it had to be regarded, and it persistently opposed everything which tended to the strict organization of Puritanism. The history of the formation of the church is still plainly pre- served in Mr. Moodey's own handwriting in "A Book Containing Ye Min- utes on Ye Church of Christ in Portsmouth, Anno., 1671."

"PORTSMOUTH, N. E., Anno 1671.

"After many serious endeavors wch had been used by ye then minister of ye place (since the pastor of ye Church there) in publig, & by severall of ye Inhabitants in Private; ye Lord (without whose presence and Blessing man builds but in vaine) was pleased at length to lay ye foundation of an House for himself in this place, of ye Beginning and progress whereof here follows a brief but true account. In ye winter of ye foregoing year [viz., 1670] there were severall meetings together of ye minister with sev'll of ye Inhabitants (who were members of other congregations) in ye country & by providence settled Inhabitants in Portsmo', to discourse and confer

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about ye greate worke and necessary Duty of entering into Church Fellow- ship, yt themselves might enjoy all ye ordinances of ye Lord's House, & theyr little ones also might be laid near God's Altars, and brought up under ye Instruction & Discipline of his House. Nor could they yt were members of other churches any longer satisfy themselves to live without ye enjoy- ment of those edifying & strengthening ordinances yt theyr soules had in some measure formerly tasted ye good of, tho' now for some yeares been kept from; others also, well affected to ye worke, professed theyr longings after those fatt and marrowed things in God's house, and theyr readiness t joyne with yue in helping to build if they should be found fitt for ye same.

"Hereupon sev'll assembled in Private & sought ye Lord by fasting & prayer yt. hee would discover to us a right way (there being many feares and discouragements before us) for ourselves and little ones (Ezra viii. 21, 22, 23), and wee hope wee may say hee was entreated of us, as ye Event hath in some measure (blessed bee his name) made manifest."

Then follows an account of private meetings, which were continued several days, to discuss the subject and arrange the conditions of church membership; meetings of inquiry as to relations of one to another, so that they could freely unite in the same society; of consent to several sermons delivered by Mr. Moodey upon the subject in the latter part of 1670 and beginning of 1671; of a committee appointed to "acquaint the Civill" authority of their purpose; of an invitation sent to other churches; of their attendance with the civil authority; of a sermon by the pastor, and the ordination of the pastor by several of the elders, and of the ordination of a deacon by imposition of hands and prayer.

The nine persons who were embodied and formed the first communicants were Joshua Moodey, Mr. John Cutt, Mr. Richard Cutt, Elias Stileman, Mr. R. Martyn, James Pendleton, Samuel Haines, Mr. John Fletcher, and John Tucker. So widely were they scattered that Stileman was from New Castle, and Haines from Great Bay, at Greenland.

Cranfield and Moodey .- It seems from the language of Cranfield's com- mission that one of the principal objects of his appointment was to settle the serious difficulty constantly reappearing in the colony in regard to the claims of the heirs of Mason. His descendants, under the lead of Robert Mason, Esq., one of Cranfield's council, came to reassert their right to most of the land here, which had been greatly improved, and the titles to which having been derived from the government of Massachusetts Bay, the judges in England had set aside. The most serious disturbances the colony had yet known now began. Cranfield's residence was at Great Island, now New Castle, where a number of the leading colonists lived. Of course, Cranfield and Mason became at once objects of bitter hostility to all the settlers, who, without any or with no good legal titles, began to fear the loss of their possessions. The home government had decided that on account of great expenses which the ancestors of this Robert Mason had incurred upon their grant of land at the Piscataqua he had a claim upon the estates here. Mason agreed with the home government to demand nothing for the time past, nor molest any one in the time to come, provided the tenants 7

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would pay him sixpence on the pound on a just and truly yearly value of all their estates. If no settlement could be made upon these terms, the cases were to be sent to England for decision. It is easy to see the tumult into which the colony was thrown, it being determined almost unanimously that the claims of Mason would not be satisfied. Each house became the seat of a secret conspiracy. All conversation was about the claims of Mason and the unpopular governor at Great Island. The result of it was that Cranfield could not settle the difficulties, adjust the claims, nor resist the wide-spread opposition, nor, as it has generally been represented, obtain any personal advantages from the office. Complaints were made against him, and listened to by the government, that he had attempted to settle himself cases which ought to have been sent to England, and he left the province in 1685. Whether it was because Cranfield was sincerely desirous to favor the Estab- lished Church, or whether he used this plea to cover up plans for self- aggrandizement, or whether it was because the Rev. Mr. Moodey, as one of the most influential men of the settlement, was in the way of his success, Governor Cranfield soon came to an open rupture with Mr. Moodey. A . ministry of twenty-four years at the time Governor Cranfield came, and steadily increasing in favor and influence, had given to Mr. Moodey a sway in all local as well as parish matters which could not easily or safely be disputed, and that Mr. Moodey was not unwilling to use it appears from a letter of one Chamberlain, secretary of the province and justice of the peace, wherein it is stated that Mr. Moodey was "archbishop and chief justice too."

The occasion for an open rupture between the head of the state and the head of the church came in 1684. In that year one of the leading charac- ters of Great Island, George Jaffrey, a constable, and a prominent merchant, was brought before the court for some evasion or infringement of the revenue laws, but for some reason legal proceedings against him were stayed, and he seemed about to escape. Mr. Jaffrey was, however, a member of the church worshiping at the old South, and it came to the ears of Mr. Moodey that there had been some false swearing in the matter, and when the state let Mr. Jaffrey go the church took him up. Mr. Moodey brought Mr. Jaffrey before the church for disciplne, against the command of the governor, and in the end obtained from him an open confession of his wrong, a confession so sincere that, instead of provoking him, it led Mr. Jaffrey to be afterwards an active, useful, and leading man in the church. Thereupon a short time after Governor Cranfield issued an order that after the Ist of January ensuing all the ministers within the province should admit all persons of suitable years and not vicious or scandalous in their lives to the blessed sacrament of the Lord's Supper, and their children unto baptism; and if any persons desired the sacrament, or their children to be baptized according to the liturgy of the Church of England, it be done accordingly under penalty of imprisonment of the clergyman refusing and the loss of all the profit of his spiritual benefices. This was in accordance with a statute of Queen Elizabeth, but it was also in conflict with a later statute granting liberty of conscience unto all Protestants,-a provision as we have seen plainly made in Cranfield's commission, and also in conflict with a provision of the church in not permitting one who was not in holy orders to administer its sacra-

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ments, and Mr. Moodey had not been ordained to the Church of England ritual. In spite of all this the arbitrary and enraged governor sent word to Mr. Moodey soon after that on a following-named Sunday he should attend worship at his church and receive the sacrament according to the service of the Established Church. The order reads very much like the reported command of one of our colonels in the late war, ordering out a battalion of men to be baptized, so as not to be surpassed by a revival in another regiment. The governor sent also to Rev. Seaborn Cotton, of Hampton, saying that when he had prepared his soul he would come and demand the sacrament of him, as he had done at Portsmouth. Whether the governor ever pre- pared his soul is not a matter of history, but without waiting for that the minister of Hampton at once fled to Boston. It was not so with the more courageous minister of Portsmouth. Mr. Moodey refused to obey the governor, saying, "I told the marshall I durst not, could not, should not do it," whereupon complaint was made against him of violating the statute of Queen Elizabeth; "that the said Joshua Moodey, being the present minister of the Town of Portsmouth, in the province of New Hampshire, by the duty of his place is by laws and statutes of the said realm of England required and commanded to administer the sacrament of the Lord's Supper in such manner and form as is set forth in the Book of Common Prayer and administration of sacraments and other rites and ceremonies in the Church of England, and shall use no other manner or form than is men- tioned and set forth in the said book. Whereas the said Joshua Moodey in contempt of the said laws and statutes hath wilfully and obstinately refused to administer the sacrament of the Lord's supper, according to the manner and form set forth in the said Book of Common Prayer unto the Hon. Edward Cranfield, Gov. of his Maj. in the Province of N. H., and others of his Majs. Council of the said Province, and doth wilfully and obstinately use some other form than is by the said statutes ordained, There- fore, &c., doth pray that the said Joshua Moodey being thereof convicted according to the Law, may suffer such penalties as by the said statutes are made and provided." In another information against Mr. Moodey praying for judgment against him that he might suffer the penalties of the statute we find this expression : "The said Moodey having for many years had the appearance & reputation of a minister of God's word." It seems that the justices were divided in their opinion, two holding that he was not liable to the penalty on account of the liberty of conscience granted to all Protestants here, and four holding that he was. Mr. Moodey himself, at the quarter sessions the 5th of February, 1684, upon examination pleaded "his not being ordained, having no maintenance according to the statute, and therefore not obliged to do that work which the statute required. Besides, these statutes were not made for these places; the known end of their removal hither being that they might enjoy liberty in these foreign plantations which they could not have by virtue of the statutes at home, and were allowed to have here, especially our commission granting liberty of conscience." But it was all to no purpose, for the governor had determined upon his imprisonment, and to the prison at Great Island Mr. Moodey went.

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History of Rockingham County, New Hampshire and representative citizens, Part 13

Author: Hazlett, Charles A Publication date: 1915 Publisher: Chicago : Richmond-Arnold Number of Pages: 1390

Author: Hazlett, Charles A
Publication date: 1915
Publisher: Chicago : Richmond-Arnold
Number of Pages: 1390