New England after the dispersions.
The New Haven colony.During the period of the greatest excitement over the Hutchinson case John Davenport, a noted Puritan minister of London, had been in Massachusetts. Like many other emigrant divines of the time he brought a migrant parish with him seeking a place to settle. Davenport arrived in June, 1637, and took part against the Antinomians in the synod. After examining every place offered them in Massachusetts, he and his friends refused all and resolved to plant a new colony. The people were Londoners and bent on trade, and Massachusetts had no suitable place for their settlement left. The bitterness of the Hutchinson controversy may have had influence in bringing them to this decision, and the preparations of Laud to subject and control Massachusetts perhaps had weight in driving them to seek a remoter settlement. Davenport had ideals of his own, and the earthly paradise he sought to found was not quite Cotton's nor was it Hooker's. He and his followers planted the New Haven colony in 1638. In this little colony church and state were more completely blended than in Massachusetts. The government was by church members only, to the discontent of other residents, and in 1644 New Haven adopted the laws of Moses in all their rigor. The colony was united with Connecticut by royal charter at the Restoration, after which the saints no longer sat upon thrones judging the tribes of Israel.
Later English emigrations to New England.The emigration to New England from the mother country was quickened by the troubles that preceded the civil war. In 1638 it reached its greatest height, having been augmented perhaps by agricultural distress. Fourteen ships bound for New England lay in the Thames at one time in the spring of that year. There was alarm at the great quantity of corn required for the emigrants, lest there should not be enough left in London to last till harvest. "Divers clothiers of great trading" resolved to "go suddenly," in which we may see, perhaps, evidence of bad times in the commercial world. Some parishes it was thought would be impoverished.Lord Maynard to Laud, 17 March, 1638, in Sainsbury.Laud was asked to put a stop to the migration; but the archbishop was busy trying to compel the Scots to use the prayer book.Savage's Winthrop's Journal, i, 319, 320, 322.Most of the lords of the Council were favorable to New England; the customs officers purposely neglected to search for contraband goods, and the ships, twenty in all, got away with or without license, and brought three thousand passengers to Boston.Rushworth, i, Part II, 409, 718.But the tide spent itself about this time, and by 1640 emigration to the New England colonies had entirely ceased.Josselyn's Rarities, 108.About twenty-one thousand two hundred people had been landed in all.
Cavalier emigration to Virginia.The swing of the political pendulum in England that served to check the Puritan exodus gave impetus to a new emigration to Virginia and Maryland.During the ten years and more before 1640 few had gone to that region but bond servants. There were in that year not quite eight thousand people in Virginia. It is the point of time at which the native Virginians began to rear a second generation born on the soil.Petition to House of Lords, 15 Aug., 1648. Royal Hist. MS., Com. Rept., vii, 45.The waning fortunes of the king sent to the colony in the following years a large cavalier emigration, and the average character of the colonists was raised. Better ministers held the Virginia parishes and better order was observed in the courts.Sainsbury, 360.In 1648 four hundred emigrants lay aboard ships bound for Virginia at one time, and in 1651 sixteen hundred royalist prisoners seem to have been sent in one detachment.
Prospective ascendency of the English colonies.By the middle of the seventeenth century the English on the North American continent were in a fair way to predominate all other Europeans. From the rather lawless little fishing villages on the coast of Maine to the rigorous Puritan communes of the New Haven colony that stretched westward to pre-empt, in advance of the Dutch, land on the shores of Long Island Sound, the English held New England. English settlers "seeking larger accommodations" had crossed to Long Island and were even pushing into the Dutch colony. The whole Chesapeake region was securely English. Already there were Virginians about to break into the Carolina country lying wild between Virginia and the Spanish colony in Florida. The French and the Dutch and the Spaniards excelled the English in far-reaching explorations and adventurousfur-trading. But the English had proved their superior aptitude for planting compact agricultural communities. A sedentary and farming population where the supply of land is not limited reaches the highest rate of natural increase. At a later time, Franklin estimated that the population of the colonies doubled every twenty-five years without including immigrants. The compactness of English settlement and the prolific increase of English people decided the fate of North America. The rather thin shell of Dutch occupation was already, by the middle of the seventeenth century, feeling the pressure under stress of which it was soon to give way. A century later collision with the populous and ever-multiplying English settlements brought about the collapse of the expanded bubble of New France.
Note 1, page 321.There is a paper on this debate in the British Record Office indorsed by Archbishop Laud, "Rec: Octob: 7. 1637," "Propositions wch have devided Mr. Hooker & Mr. Cotton in Newe England. 1. That a man may prove his justification by his works of sanctification, as the first, best, and only cheife evidence of his salvation. 2. Whither fayth be active or passive in justification. 3. Whither there be any saving preparation in a Christian soule before his unyon with Christ. This latter is only Hooker's opinion, the rest of the ministers do not concurr with him: Cotton and the rest of the contrary opinion are against him and his party in all." Colonial Papers, ix, 71. In the next paper in the same volume, also indorsed by Laud, the controversy is more fully set forth. Copies of both are in the Bancroft collection of the New York Public Library. Laud indorsed these papers respectively October 7 and 15, 1637. The Cambridge Synod, which met August 30th, had adjourned late in September, and the debateswhich divided the two divines must have preceded it, and perhaps preceded the migration of Hooker to Connecticut in 1636. When Haynes was Governor of Massachusetts he had pronounced the sentence of banishment against Williams. But some years later, while Governor of Connecticut, he relented a little and wrote to Williams: "I think, Mr. Williams, I must now confesse to you, that the most wise God hath provided and cut out this part of his world for a refuge and receptacle for all sorts of consciences. I am now under a cloud, and my brother Hooker, with the bay, as you have been, we have removed from them thus far, and yet they are not satisfied." Quoted by Williams in a letter to Mason, 1st Massachusetts Historical Collections, i, 280.Note 2, page 322.The abstract of Hooker's sermon of May 31, 1638, as deciphered and published by Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull, is in the Collections of the Connecticut Historical Society, i, 20, 21, and the Fundamental Laws of 1639 are in Hinman's Antiquities, 20, and ff., and in Trumbull's Blue Laws, 51. Compare also the remarkable letter of Hooker to Winthrop in Connecticut Historical Society Collections, i, 3-15. Hooker objects strongly to the right of arbitrary decisions by the magistrate: "I must confess, I ever looked at it as a way which leads directly to tyranny, and so to confusion, and must plainly profess, if it was in my liberty, I would choose neither to live nor leave my posterity under such government." This letter exhibits Hooker's intellect to great advantage. One is inclined to rank him above most of his New England contemporaries in clearness and breadth of thought.Note 3, page 325.The selling of half-developed homesteads to newcomers by older settlers was of constant occurrence in all the colonies during the colonial period. It was a notable practice on the frontiers of Pennsylvania down to the Revolution, and perhaps later. Hubbard thus describes what went on in every New England settlement: "Thus the first planters in every township, having the advantage of the first discovery of places, removed themselves into new dwellings, thereby making room for others to succeed them in their old." General History of New England, 155.Note 4, page 328.The existence in England of a doctrine resembling that of the followers of Cotton and Mrs. Hutchinson is implied in Welde's preface to the Short Story of the Rise, Reign, and Ruine of Antinomianism. "And this is the very reason that this kind of doctrinetakes so well here inLondonand other parts of the kingdome, and that you see so many dance after this pipe, running after such and such, crowding the Churches and filling the doores and windowes."Note 5, page 328.Giles Firmin's Review of Davis's Vindication, 1693, quotes from a letter of Shepard of Cambridge, Massachusetts: "Preach Humiliation, labor to possess Men with a Sence of Misery and wrath to come. The Gospel Consolations and Grace which some would have only disht out as the Dainties of the times and set upon the Ministry's Table may possibly tickle and ravish some and do some good to some which are Humbled and Converted already. But if Axes and Wedges be not used withal to hew and break this rough unhewn bold but professing age, I am Confident the Work and Fruit ... will be but meer Hypocrisie."Note 6, page 330.Notwithstanding his early imprudence during the partisan excitement in Boston, Whelewright was a man of sound judgment, and his testimony regarding his sister-in-law is the most important we have. "She was a woman of good wit and not onely so, ... but naturally of a good judgment too, as appeared in her civill occasions; In spirituals indeed she gave her understanding over into the power of suggestion and immediate dictates, by reason of which she had many strange fancies, and erroneous tenents possest her, especially during her confinement ... attended by melancholy." Mercurius Americanus, p. 7.Note 7, page 338.Hugh Peter, after his return to England, adopted the views in favor of toleration beginning to prevail there. Nine years after he had obtruded himself so eagerly to testify against Mrs. Hutchinson, he was writing to New England earnest remonstrances against persecution. 4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, vi, where the letters are given.Note 8, page 338.There were those who wished to give time for a second admonition before excommunication, but they were overruled, probably by Wilson. Winthrop, i, 310. It would, perhaps, have been in better form to take the other and less eager course. There is a Latin paper in the British Public Record Office, dated 3 March, 1635, which professes to give a brief and orderly digest of the canons of government constituted and observed in the reformed New England churches. I am unable to trace its authority. From this I quote; "Qui pertinacitur consistorii admonitiones rejecerit a cœna domini suspendatur. Si suspensus, postiteratus admonitiones nulla pœnitentiæ signum dederit ad excomunicationem procedat Ecclesia."Note 9, page 341.It would be a waste of time to controvert the ingenious apologies which have been written to prove that an inexorable necessity compelled the banishment of the Antinomians. The Massachusetts government was in its very nature and theory opposed to religious toleration, as we may see by the reference of the case of Gorton and his companions to the elders, and their verdict that these men, not residents of the jurisdiction, ought to be put to death for constructive blasphemy, a decision that the magistrates by a majority vote would have put in execution if the "deputies" or representative members of the assembly had not dissented. Savage's Winthrop's Journal, ii, 177. The doctrine of intolerance is ingeniously set forth in Cotton's "The Powring Ovt of the Seven Vials, ... very fit and necessary for this Present Age," published in 1642. Cotton compares Jesuits and heretics to wolves, and says, "Is it not an acceptable service to the whole Country to cut off the ravening Wolves?" The Puritans of New England from their very circumstances were slower to accept the doctrine of religious liberty than their coreligionists in England.
Note 1, page 321.There is a paper on this debate in the British Record Office indorsed by Archbishop Laud, "Rec: Octob: 7. 1637," "Propositions wch have devided Mr. Hooker & Mr. Cotton in Newe England. 1. That a man may prove his justification by his works of sanctification, as the first, best, and only cheife evidence of his salvation. 2. Whither fayth be active or passive in justification. 3. Whither there be any saving preparation in a Christian soule before his unyon with Christ. This latter is only Hooker's opinion, the rest of the ministers do not concurr with him: Cotton and the rest of the contrary opinion are against him and his party in all." Colonial Papers, ix, 71. In the next paper in the same volume, also indorsed by Laud, the controversy is more fully set forth. Copies of both are in the Bancroft collection of the New York Public Library. Laud indorsed these papers respectively October 7 and 15, 1637. The Cambridge Synod, which met August 30th, had adjourned late in September, and the debateswhich divided the two divines must have preceded it, and perhaps preceded the migration of Hooker to Connecticut in 1636. When Haynes was Governor of Massachusetts he had pronounced the sentence of banishment against Williams. But some years later, while Governor of Connecticut, he relented a little and wrote to Williams: "I think, Mr. Williams, I must now confesse to you, that the most wise God hath provided and cut out this part of his world for a refuge and receptacle for all sorts of consciences. I am now under a cloud, and my brother Hooker, with the bay, as you have been, we have removed from them thus far, and yet they are not satisfied." Quoted by Williams in a letter to Mason, 1st Massachusetts Historical Collections, i, 280.
Note 2, page 322.The abstract of Hooker's sermon of May 31, 1638, as deciphered and published by Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull, is in the Collections of the Connecticut Historical Society, i, 20, 21, and the Fundamental Laws of 1639 are in Hinman's Antiquities, 20, and ff., and in Trumbull's Blue Laws, 51. Compare also the remarkable letter of Hooker to Winthrop in Connecticut Historical Society Collections, i, 3-15. Hooker objects strongly to the right of arbitrary decisions by the magistrate: "I must confess, I ever looked at it as a way which leads directly to tyranny, and so to confusion, and must plainly profess, if it was in my liberty, I would choose neither to live nor leave my posterity under such government." This letter exhibits Hooker's intellect to great advantage. One is inclined to rank him above most of his New England contemporaries in clearness and breadth of thought.
Note 3, page 325.The selling of half-developed homesteads to newcomers by older settlers was of constant occurrence in all the colonies during the colonial period. It was a notable practice on the frontiers of Pennsylvania down to the Revolution, and perhaps later. Hubbard thus describes what went on in every New England settlement: "Thus the first planters in every township, having the advantage of the first discovery of places, removed themselves into new dwellings, thereby making room for others to succeed them in their old." General History of New England, 155.
Note 4, page 328.The existence in England of a doctrine resembling that of the followers of Cotton and Mrs. Hutchinson is implied in Welde's preface to the Short Story of the Rise, Reign, and Ruine of Antinomianism. "And this is the very reason that this kind of doctrinetakes so well here inLondonand other parts of the kingdome, and that you see so many dance after this pipe, running after such and such, crowding the Churches and filling the doores and windowes."
Note 5, page 328.Giles Firmin's Review of Davis's Vindication, 1693, quotes from a letter of Shepard of Cambridge, Massachusetts: "Preach Humiliation, labor to possess Men with a Sence of Misery and wrath to come. The Gospel Consolations and Grace which some would have only disht out as the Dainties of the times and set upon the Ministry's Table may possibly tickle and ravish some and do some good to some which are Humbled and Converted already. But if Axes and Wedges be not used withal to hew and break this rough unhewn bold but professing age, I am Confident the Work and Fruit ... will be but meer Hypocrisie."
Note 6, page 330.Notwithstanding his early imprudence during the partisan excitement in Boston, Whelewright was a man of sound judgment, and his testimony regarding his sister-in-law is the most important we have. "She was a woman of good wit and not onely so, ... but naturally of a good judgment too, as appeared in her civill occasions; In spirituals indeed she gave her understanding over into the power of suggestion and immediate dictates, by reason of which she had many strange fancies, and erroneous tenents possest her, especially during her confinement ... attended by melancholy." Mercurius Americanus, p. 7.
Note 7, page 338.Hugh Peter, after his return to England, adopted the views in favor of toleration beginning to prevail there. Nine years after he had obtruded himself so eagerly to testify against Mrs. Hutchinson, he was writing to New England earnest remonstrances against persecution. 4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, vi, where the letters are given.
Note 8, page 338.There were those who wished to give time for a second admonition before excommunication, but they were overruled, probably by Wilson. Winthrop, i, 310. It would, perhaps, have been in better form to take the other and less eager course. There is a Latin paper in the British Public Record Office, dated 3 March, 1635, which professes to give a brief and orderly digest of the canons of government constituted and observed in the reformed New England churches. I am unable to trace its authority. From this I quote; "Qui pertinacitur consistorii admonitiones rejecerit a cœna domini suspendatur. Si suspensus, postiteratus admonitiones nulla pœnitentiæ signum dederit ad excomunicationem procedat Ecclesia."
Note 9, page 341.It would be a waste of time to controvert the ingenious apologies which have been written to prove that an inexorable necessity compelled the banishment of the Antinomians. The Massachusetts government was in its very nature and theory opposed to religious toleration, as we may see by the reference of the case of Gorton and his companions to the elders, and their verdict that these men, not residents of the jurisdiction, ought to be put to death for constructive blasphemy, a decision that the magistrates by a majority vote would have put in execution if the "deputies" or representative members of the assembly had not dissented. Savage's Winthrop's Journal, ii, 177. The doctrine of intolerance is ingeniously set forth in Cotton's "The Powring Ovt of the Seven Vials, ... very fit and necessary for this Present Age," published in 1642. Cotton compares Jesuits and heretics to wolves, and says, "Is it not an acceptable service to the whole Country to cut off the ravening Wolves?" The Puritans of New England from their very circumstances were slower to accept the doctrine of religious liberty than their coreligionists in England.