History of Rockingham and Strafford counties, New Hampshire : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 15

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton)
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Philadelphia : J. W. Lewis
Number of Pages: 1714

USA > New Hampshire > Strafford County > History of Rockingham and Strafford counties, New Hampshire : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men > Part 15
USA > New Hampshire > Rockingham County > History of Rockingham and Strafford counties, New Hampshire : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men > Part 15

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knees. Discarding many rich vestments which sur- rounded the altars of the ancient faith, she yet retained to the horror of weak minds the robe of white linen which typified the purity which belonged to her as the mysterious spouse of Christ." And yet, as history found, in the very concessions which gave her birth were the elements which forbade perpetuity, and by the gradual development of which she is now break- ing to pieces.

When Mary came to the English throne, through her leaning to Catholicism, the ancient liturgies of the mass were revived, and the Book of Common Prayer abandoned. Under Queen Elizabeth the service ac- cording to the Book of Common Prayer was restored. During her reign the thirty-nine articles were pre- pared by a convocation of the clergy, and at the same time a vote was taken in the Lower House upon throw- ing out the ceremonies, and they were retained only by a majority of one, showing how nearly balanced the Puritans and Episcopalians had become. After these articles were adopted the clergy were ordered to subscribe to them, and those who refused were termed Non-conformists. Elizabeth liked more and more the ritual of Rome, and felt more and more that the Reformers had gone too far in cutting off forms and observances; while on the other hand the Non-con- formists, many of them leaving on account of perse- ention, came back from the homes of the Reformation whither they fled still more embittered against all forms, and persecution was returned by persecution.

When James came to the throne the Reformers ex- pected from him some favors, because he had been reared in Scotland and because he had twice sworn and subscribed to their Confession of Faith, and once said in the General Assembly of the Puritans that he praised God he was born to be king of such a church, the purest in the world, and that the service of the Church of England was an ill said mass in English.

But we have all found that the promises and pro- fessions of a man before gaining office and his per- formances afterwards are rarely in accord. So when James became king his demeanor towards the Puri- tans entirely changed. He was himself a man of free living to say the least, liked mirth and sports, and could not bear the severe discipline of the Re- formers. He had learned also in Scotland that with all their complaints against the Romanists the Pres- byterian clergy of the Scotch Kirk had quite as much of the spirit of popery as the Romish priests, and that they were bent upon a union of church and State even more complete than at Rome, only it was to be of their ruling, and moreover he found that the Puri- tans were tending to a democracy sure to be his over- throw. "A Scotch Presbytery," said King James, " agrees as well with monarchy as tod and the devil." So James as monarch began a violent opposition to the Puritans. Still the parties had not come to an open rupture, and James called a council to harmo- nize the differences. The subjects of greatest dispute

HISTORY OF ROCKINGHAM COUNTY, NEW HAMPSHIRE.

were the cross in baptism, the ring in marriage, the glebe with its chapel and parsonage was given by the inhabitants to the wardens and their successors for- ever, just on the eve of the civil war in England. Can any one 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 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 sup- pose 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 canse in the very face of Puritanism ? No one can wish to ques- tion 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 in- terests of religious liberty ; but the spirit of coloniza- tion at that time pervaded all classes about alike, and the character of the various settlements soon became much the same. use of the surplice, and bowing at the name of Jesus. Some changes were made in the Common Prayer; each party went away more than ever dissatisfied. At this long reach of years it is impossible to enter into or portray the intense excitement which pervaded every class in England. The kingdom, about equally divided, was hastening on to the temporary rule of | begun and carried on simply in the interests of trade, the Puritans during the establishment of the Com- monwealth. Persecution on the side of the Estab- lished Church was met by raillery on the side of the Reformers. All the innocent amusements of life were classed with the guilty by the indiscriminating and stern Puritans. The sports of the English people came particularly under their ban, and when the king gave countenance to dancing, archery, and may- poles on Sunday after worship, the wrath of the Puri- tans was beyond control. Bear-baiting, then a favorite sport, particularly called forth the censure of the Puri- tans, and if with any of that humane instinct which at the present day characterizes the movement against cruelty to animals it had been well, but the Puritans opposed it not because it was wrong in itself or tor- tured the animals, but simply because their opponents indulged in it: as Macaulay has so pointedly ex- pressed it, " the Puritans hated bear-baiting not be- cause it gave pain to the bear but because it gave pleasure to the spectators."

All the forms of the church which had been en- deared by generations of worshipers became the butt of the Puritans. The altar was removed from the wall and placed in the middle of the church, and thenceforth denominated the communion-table, while the papists irreverently termed them oyster-boards. The sermons of the Puritans, their long prayers and endless discourses, became the ridicule of the Ritual- ists. Queen Elizabeth used to say that two or three preachers were sufficient for a whole county, while the Puritans found not a little compensation for their exile in listening to sermons of indefinite length whenever they pleased.

To add to the theological bitterness came also a political warfare, for it was deemed by the reformers that the spirit of liberty could not coexist with mon- archy, that Episcopacy was the natural enemy of de- mocracy, and the same rancor they bore towards their spiritual head, the pope, was turned against their political head, the king.

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 trou- bles that our settlements were made, the Bay Colony by the Puritans, Maine and New, Hampshire, the Piscataqua by the adherents of the Established Churches. The first chapel on Pleasant Street was built, and Richard Gibson, the first minister of the Piscataqua parish, preached in it the very year (1638) that Episcopacy was abolished in England, and the

One of the Hiltons of our Dover settlement, first settled at Plymouth, writes from there in 1621, and after speaking of the pleasant climate, fertile lands, plentiful timber, and abundant fruits, goes on to say, " We are all freeholders, the rent day doth not trouble us, and all those good Blessings we have in their sea- son for taking. Our Companie are for most part very religious, honest people ; the word of God sincerely taught ns every Sabbath, so that I know not anything a contented mind can here want." Nothing could better reveal than this private correspondence the actual character of the colony,-persons who felt a glad sense of release from their persecutions, from the re- straints and taxes and formalities of an old commu- nity, and who were equally pleased with the devout- ness of their simple worship.

There was an additional reason why the Bay Colony should regard this colony with distrust, and follow it with all the misrepresentations born of the bitter con- fliet in England. Puritanism had not yet quite gained the supremacy, and until it did there runs all through the history of that settlement a fear of Episcopacy, lest perchance they should themselves be brought under its sway. Elements of the Established Church constantly come to the surface, and call forth such a feeling of indignation, wrath, and anxiety as can now hardly be appreciated.

When Robert Gorges, son of Sir Ferdinando, came to the Massachusetts Bay, with a learned and worthy minister of the English Church to begin a settlement, and other families, they found no peace. Attempts to found Episcopal Churches in Massachusetts proved constant failures. At Salem Common Prayer was read for a while, but Maverick and Skelton, and Black- stone and Lyford, and other clergymen of the Estab- lished Church found no reception for their views and

PORTSMOUTHI.

little toleration for their efforts. The Massachusetts Colony was constantly in dread lest the king should impose the ceremony of the Church of England upon them, and, either with or without just reason, con- stantly suspected Mason and Gorges and the settle- ment at the Piscataqua of inducing the king to do so, and charged them with misrepresenting the Bay Colony to the government of England.

On the other hand, 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 repro- duced in these neighboring settlements. The ques- 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 interests of trade, and that it was wholly irre- 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 worshipers 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. 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 Episco- pacy appear, so there were doubtless some of Puri- 'ligious, or, as Winthrop says, that it was the usual tanism already here from the beginning. Next, with the greater influence and fear of the Massachusetts colony, all her etforts were directed towards hasten- ing 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 respeet they feared some ill neighborhood from them ;" where- upon one of the Puritan historians writes, " As these new proprietors were of Puritan preferences and principles, such a consideration must have been very welcome to the 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 be- longed to it, a feeling which seems to have remained deep-seated and active even to the time of the ap- pointment of the first Governor of the separate prov- ince 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 Pis-

cataqua. The religious and political differences ran so high that the commissioners found hard work and ill treatment awaiting them. John and Richard Cutt, who seem to be the leading selectmen of Portsmouth, send a messenger post-haste to Boston for adrice, 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 advan- tage 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 meet- ing 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 impar- tial consideration the true condition of the. colony, its various divisions, its theological and political ex- citement, and its personal animosities.

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, par- sonage, glebe land, and all the appointments for puh- lic worship were transformed with seemingly so little publie or long-continued opposition to the Puritans ?

In the first place we must give up all those sug- gestions 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

HISTORY OF ROCKINGHAM COUNTY, NEW HAMPSHIRE.

anybody have reasoned thus if a Catholic priest had been chosen, or the glebe land come under the Ro- manists' patronage, or that the adherents of the Es- tablished Church, in assenting to the worship they were powerless to prevent, did ever see in the change any perversion of the original intention and employ- ment 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 with- out robes, and without the Book of Common Prayer, whether there was in that any perversion of the pro- visions for the maintenance of a church, can there be any doubt what their reply would be ?

The parish had been gathered, the chapel and par- sonage 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 Piscataqna settlement, but the proprietors and supporters of the settlement died, and their estates came into new hands. Some of the leading churchi- men of the colony went elsewhere or died, and of course many of the settlers were as willing to sup-

have seen, was far more populous and prosperous, and even reached as far as England to see that their neigh- boring settlers were of the same faith. The jurisdic- tion of Massachusetts was established over the Piscata- qua settlement just at that time, and the very year the chapel was built Episcopacy was abolished in Eng- land. If all the records which a sectarian zeal made way with were extant, we should doubtless find more open opposition to the rule and worship of the Puri- tans 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 se- cret, 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 wor- ship 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 building of the Second Church.

The Puritans, too, could not as I see have done or been expected to do otherwise. There was the un- used 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, aud went to what they had. As to their appropriating it as their own there-

after, that was what either side was doing to the other whenever it could during that long period of ecclesias- tical 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 medita- tion 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 per- sons hold to their inherited or adopted faith to regard it as quite probable that during that century Episco- pacy did not quite die out among the descendants of the early worshipers.

The most important incidents in the recorded his- port the worship of one church as another, and some ; tory of this settlement now follow for a time the two were earnest for Puritanism. The Bay Colony, as we ; 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 subscription was taken for his main- tenance 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 gatli- ered. 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 re- garded, and it persistently opposed everything which tended to the strict organization of Puritanism. The history of the formation of the church is still plainly preserved in Mr. Moodey's own handwriting, and runs as follows :

" PORTSMOUTH, N. E., Anno 1671.

" After many eerions 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 Bless- ing 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 eev'Il of ye Iubabitants (who were members of other congregations) in ye

RESIDENCE OF E. H. WINCHESTER, PORTSMOUTH, N. H.

PORTSMOUTHI.

country & by providence settled Inhabitants In Partsmo', to discourse and confer about ye greate worke and necessary Duty of entering into Church Fellowship, yt thenwolves 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 Fostruetion & Discipline of his House. Nor could they yt wore members of other churches any longer satisfy them- selves to live without ye enjoyment of those edifying & strengthening onlinances yt theyr sontles 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 to 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 & pruyer yt. hes would discover to us a right way (there being many frares and discouragements before us) for ourselves and little ones (Ezra vijf. 21, 22, 23), and wee hope wee may say hee was entreated of us, na ye Event hath in some mensure (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 ; meet- ings 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 begin- ning 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, Samnel 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 lan- guage of Cranfield's commission that one of the prin- cipal 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. Ilis 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 im- proved, 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 ob- jeets of bitter hostility to all the settlers, who, without any or with no good legal titles, began to fear the Joss 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 elaim 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 would pay him sixpence on the pound on a just and true 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 casy to see the tumult into which the colony was thrown, it being determined ahnost unanimously that the claims of Mason would not be satisfied. Each house became the seat of a secret conspiracy. All conver- sation was about the claims of Mason and the un- popular Governor at Great Island. The result of it was that Cranfield could not settle the difficulties, ad- just 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 Established 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, Gov- ernor Cranfield soon came to an open rupture with Mr. Moodey. A ministry of twenty-four years at the time Governor Cranfield came, and steadily increas- ing 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." }

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History of Rockingham and Strafford counties, New Hampshire : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 15

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) Publication date: 1882 Publisher: Philadelphia : J. W. Lewis Number of Pages: 1714

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton)
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Philadelphia : J. W. Lewis
Number of Pages: 1714