Before the little federation of towns had framed its government, it had its Indian question to dispose of. Three years before the migration led by Hooker, a crew of eight traders, while making their way up the river to the Dutch station on the site of Hartford, had been murdered by a party of Indians subject to Sassacus, chief sachem of the Pequots. Negotiations concerning this outrage had gone on between Sassacus and the government at Boston, and the Pequots had promised to deliver up the murderers, but had neglected to do so. In the summer of 1636 some Indians on Block Island subject to the Narragansetts murdered the pioneer John Oldham, who was sailing on the Sound, and captured his little vessel. At this, says Underhill, "God stirred up the hearts" of Governor Vane and the rest of the magistrates. They were determined to make an end of the Indian question and show the savages that such things would not be endured. First an embassy was sent to Canonicus and his nephew Miantonomo, chief sachems of the Narragansetts, who hastened to disclaim all responsibility for the murder, and to throw the blame entirely upon the Indians of the island. Vane then sent out three vessels under command of Endicott, who ravaged Block Island, burning wigwams, sinking canoes, and slaying dogs, for the men had taken to the woods. Endicott then crossed to the mainland to reckon with the Pequots. He demanded the surrender of the murderers, with a thousand fathoms of wampum for damages; and not getting a satisfactory answer, he attacked the Indians, killed a score of them, seized their ripe corn, and burned and spoiled what he could. But such reprisals served only to enrage the red men. Lyon Gardiner, commander of the Saybrook fort, complained to Endicott: "You come hither to raise these wasps about my ears; then you will take wing and flee away." The immediate effect was to incite Sassacus to do his utmost to compass the ruin of the English. The superstitious awe with which the white men were at first regarded had been somewhat lessened by familiar contact with them, as in Aesop's fable of the fox and the lion. The resources of Indian diplomacy were exhausted in the attempt to unite the Narragansett warriors with the Pequots in a grand crusade against the white men. Such a combination could hardly have been as formidable as that which was effected forty years afterward in King Philip's war; for the savages had not as yet become accustomed to firearms, and the English settlements did not present so many points exposed to attack; but there is no doubt that it might have wrought fearful havoc. We can, at any rate, find no difficulty in comprehending the manifold perplexity of the Massachusetts men at this time, threatened as they were at once by an Indian crusade, by the machinations of a faithless king, and by a bitter theological quarrel at home, in this eventful year when they laid aside part of their incomes to establish Harvard College. [[Sidenote: Origin of the Pequot War]
The schemes of Sassacus were unsuccessful. The hereditary enmity of the Narragansetts toward their Pequot rivals was too strong to be lightly overcome. Roger Williams, taking advantage of this feeling, so worked upon the minds of the Narragansett chiefs that in the autumn of 1636 they sent an embassy to Boston and made a treaty of alliance with the English. The Pequots were thus left to fight out their own quarrel; and had they still been separated from the English by the distance between Boston and the Thames river, the feud might very likely have smouldered until the drift of events had given a different shape to it. But as the English had in this very year thrown out their advanced posts into the lower Connecticut valley, there was clearly no issue from the situation save in deadly war. All through the winter of 1636-37 the Connecticut towns were kept in a state of alarm by the savages. Men going to their work were killed and horribly mangled. A Wethersfield man was kidnapped and roasted alive. Emboldened by the success of this feat, the Pequots attacked Wethersfield, massacred ten people, and carried away two girls. [[Sidenote: Sassacus is foiled by Roger Williams] [[Sidenote: The Pequots take the warpath alone]
Wrought up to desperation by these atrocities, the Connecticut men appealed to Massachusetts and Plymouth for aid, and put into service ninety of their own number, under command of John Mason, an excellent and sturdy officer who had won golden opinions from Sir Thomas Fairfax, under whom he had served in the Netherlands. It took time to get men from Boston, and all that Massachusetts contributed to the enterprise at its beginning was that eccentric daredevil John Underhill, with a force of twenty men. Seventy friendly Mohegans, under their chief Uncas, eager to see vengeance wrought upon their Pequot oppressors, accompanied the expedition. From the fort at Saybrook this little company set sail on the twentieth of May, 1637, and landed in brilliant moonlight near Point Judith, where they were reinforced by four hundred Narragansetts and Nyantics. From this point they turned westward toward the stronghold of the Pequots, near the place where the town of Stonington now stands. As they approached the dreaded spot the courage of the Indian allies gave out, and they slunk behind, declaring that Sassacus was a god whom it was useless to think of attacking. The force with which Mason and Underhill advanced to the fray consisted of just seventy-seven Englishmen. Their task was to assault and carry an entrenched fort or walled village containing seven hundred Pequots. The fort was a circle of two or three acres in area, girdled by a palisade of sturdy sapling-trunks, set firm and deep into the ground, the narrow interstices between them serving as loopholes wherefrom to reconnoitre any one passing by and to shoot at assailants. At opposite sides of this stronghold were two openings barely large enough to let any one go through. Within this enclosure were the crowded wigwams. The attack was skilfully managed, and was a complete surprise. A little before daybreak Mason, with sixteen men, occupied one of the doors, while Underhill made sure of the other. The Indians in panic sought first one outlet and then the other, and were ruthlessly shot down, whichever way they turned. A few succeeded in breaking loose, but these were caught and tomahawked by the Indian allies, who, though afraid to take the risks of the fight, were ready enough to help slay the fugitives. The English threw firebrands among the wigwams, and soon the whole village was in a light blaze, and most of the savages suffered the horrible death which they were so fond of inflicting upon their captives. Of the seven hundred Pequots in the stronghold, but five got away with their lives. All this bloody work had been done in less than an hour, and of the English there had been two killed and sixteen wounded. It was the end of the Pequot nation. Of the remnant which had not been included in this wholesale slaughter, most were soon afterwards destroyed piecemeal in a running fight which extended as far westward as the site of Fairfield. Sassacus fled across the Hudson river to the Mohawks, who slew him and sent his scalp to Boston, as a peace-offering to the English. The few survivors were divided between the Mohegans and Narragansetts and adopted into those tribes. Truly the work was done with Cromwellian thoroughness. The tribe which had lorded it so fiercely over the New England forests was all at once wiped out of existence. So terrible a vengeance the Indians had never heard of. If the name of Pequot had hitherto been a name of terror, so now did the Englishmen win the inheritance of that deadly prestige. Not for eight-and-thirty years after the destruction of the Pequots, not until a generation of red men had grown up that knew not Underhill and Mason, did the Indian of New England dare again to lift his hand against the white man. [[Sidenote: And are exterminated]
Such scenes of wholesale slaughter are not pleasant reading in this milder age. But our forefathers felt that the wars of Canaan afforded a sound precedent for such cases; and, indeed, if we remember what the soldiers of Tilly and Wallenstein were doing at this very time in Germany, we shall realize that the work of Mason and Underhill would not have been felt by any one in that age to merit censure or stand in need of excuses. As a matter of practical policy the annihilation of the Pequots can be condemned only by those who read history so incorrectly as to suppose that savages, whose business is to torture and slay, can always be dealt with according to the methods in use between civilized peoples. A mighty nation, like the United States, is in honour bound to treat the red man with scrupulous justice and refrain from cruelty in punishing his delinquencies. But if the founders of Connecticut, in confronting a danger which threatened their very existence, struck with savage fierceness, we cannot blame them. The world is so made that it is only in that way that the higher races have been able to preserve themselves and carry on their progressive work.
The overthrow of the Pequots was a cardinal event in the planting of New England. It removed the chief obstacle to the colonization of the Connecticut coast, and brought the inland settlements into such unimpeded communication with those on tide-water as to prepare the way for the formation of the New England confederacy. Its first fruits were seen in the direction taken by the next wave of migration, which ended the Puritan exodus from England to America. About a month after the storming of the palisaded village there arrived in Boston a company of wealthy London merchants, with their families. The most prominent among them, Theophilus Eaton, was a member of the Company of Massachusetts Bay. Their pastor, John Davenport, was an eloquent preacher and a man of power. He was a graduate of Oxford, and in 1624 had been chosen vicar of St. Stephen's parish, in Coleman street, London. When he heard that Cotton and Hooker were about to sail for America, he sought earnestly to turn them from what he deemed the error of their ways, but instead he became converted himself and soon incurred the especial enmity of Laud, so that it became necessary for him to flee to Amsterdam. In 1636 he returned to England, and in concert with Eaton organized a scheme of emigration that included men from Yorkshire, Hertfordshire, and Kent. The leaders arrived in Boston in the midst of the Antinomian disputes, and although Davenport won admiration for his skill in battling with heresy, he may perhaps have deemed it preferable to lead his flock to some new spot in the wilderness where such warfare might not be required. The merchants desired a fine harbour and good commercial situation, and the reports of the men who returned from hunting the Pequots told them of just such a spot at Quinnipiack on Long Island Sound. Here they could carry out their plan of putting into practice a theocratic ideal even more rigid than that which obtained in Massachusetts, and arrange their civil as well as ecclesiastical affairs in accordance with rules to be obtained from a minute study of the Scriptures. [[Sidenote: The colony of New Haven]
In the spring of 1638 the town of New Haven was accordingly founded. The next year a swarm from this new town settled Milford, while another party, freshly arrived from England, made the beginnings of Guilford. In 1640 Stamford was added to the group, and in 1643 the four towns were united into the republic of New Haven, to which Southold, on Long Island, and Branford were afterwards added. As being a confederation of independent towns, New Haven resembled Connecticut. In other respects the differences between the two reflected the differences between Davenport and Hooker; the latter was what would now be called more radical than Winthrop or Cotton, the former was more conservative. In the New Haven colony none but church-members could vote, and this measure at the outset disfranchised more than half the settlers in New Haven town, nearly half in Guilford, and less than one fifth in Milford. This result was practically less democratic than in Massachusetts where it was some time before the disfranchisement attained such dimensions. The power of the clergy reached its extreme point in New Haven, where each of the towns was governed by seven ecclesiastical officers known as "pillars of the church." These magistrates served as judges, and trial by jury was dispensed with, because no authority could be found for it in the laws of Moses. The legislation was quaint enough, though the famous "Blue Laws" of New Haven, which have been made the theme of so many jests at the expense of our forefathers, never really existed. The story of the Blue Laws was first published in 1781 by the Rev. Samuel Peters, a Tory refugee in London, who took delight in horrifying our British cousins with tales of wholesale tarring and feathering done by the patriots of the Revolution. In point of strict veracity Dr. Peters reminds one of Baron Munchausen; he declares that the river at Bellows Falls flows so fast as to float iron crowbars, and he gravely describes sundry animals who were evidently cousins to the Jabberwok. The most famous passage of his pretended code is that which enacts that "no woman shall kiss her child on the Sabbath," and that "no one shall play on any instrument of music except the drum, trumpet, or jewsharp." [[Sidenote: Legend of the "Blue Laws"]
When the Long Parliament met in 1640, the Puritan exodus to New England came to an end. During the twenty years which had elapsed since the voyage of the Mayflower, the population had grown to 26,000 souls. Of this number scarcely 500 had arrived before 1629. It is a striking fact, since it expresses a causal relation and not a mere coincidence, that the eleven years, 1629-1640, during which Charles I. governed England without a parliament, were the same eleven years that witnessed the planting of New England. For more than a century after this there was no considerable migration to this part of North America. Puritan England now found employment for all its energies and all its enthusiasm at home. The struggle with the king and the efforts toward reorganization under Cromwell were to occupy it for another score of years, and then, by the time of the Restoration the youthful creative energy of Puritanism had spent itself. The influence of this great movement was indeed destined to grow wider and deeper with the progress of civilization, but after 1660 its creative work began to run in new channels and assume different forms. [[Sidenote: End of the Puritan exodus]
It is curious to reflect what might have been the result, to America and to the world, had things in England gone differently between 1620 and 1660. Had the policy of James and Charles been less formidable, the Puritan exodus might never have occurred, and the Virginian type of society, varied perhaps by a strong Dutch infusion, might have become supreme in America. The western continent would have lost in richness and variety of life, and it is not likely that Europe would have made a corresponding gain, for the moral effect of the challenge, the struggle, and the overthrow of monarchy in England was a stimulus sorely needed by neighbouring peoples. It is not always by avoiding the evil, it is rather by grappling with it and conquering it that character is strengthened and life enriched, and there is no better example of this than the history of England in the seventeenth century.
On the other hand, if the Stuart despotism had triumphed in England, the Puritan exodus would doubtless have been swelled to huge dimensions. New England would have gained strength so quickly that much less irritation than she actually suffered between 1664 and 1689 would probably have goaded her into rebellion. The war of independence might have been waged a century sooner than it was. It is not easy to point to any especial advantage that could have come to America from this; one is rather inclined to think of the peculiarly valuable political training of the eighteenth century that would have been lost. Such surmises are for the most part idle. But as concerns Europe, it is plain to be seen, for reasons stated in my first chapter, that the decisive victory of Charles I. would have been a calamity of the first magnitude. It would have been like the Greeks losing Marathon or the Saracens winning Tours, supposing the worst consequences ever imagined in those hypothetical cases to have been realized. Or taking a more contracted view, we can see how England, robbed of her Puritan element, might still have waxed in strength, as France has done in spite of losing the Huguenots; but she could not have taken the proud position that she has come to occupy as mother of nations. Her preeminence since Cromwell's time has been chiefly due to her unrivalled power of planting self-supporting colonies, and that power has had its roots in English self-government. It is the vitality of the English Idea that is making the language of Cromwell and Washington dominant in the world.
The Puritan exodus to New England, which came to an end about 1640, was purely and exclusively English. There was nothing in it that came from the continent of Europe, nothing that was either Irish or Scotch, very little that was Welsh. As Palfrey says, the population of 26,000 that had been planted in New England by 1640 "thenceforward continued to multiply on its own soil for a century and a half, in remarkable seclusion from other communities." During the whole of this period New England received but few immigrants; and it was not until after the Revolutionary War that its people had fairly started on their westward march into the state of New York and beyond, until now, after yet another century, we find some of their descendants dwelling in a homelike Salem and a Portland of charming beauty on the Pacific coast. Three times between the meeting of the Long Parliament and the meeting of the Continental Congress did the New England colonies receive a slight infusion of non-English blood. In 1652, after his victories at Dunbar and Worcester, Cromwell sent 270 of his Scottish prisoners to Boston, where the descendants of some of them still dwell. After the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, 150 families of Huguenots came to Massachusetts. And finally in 1719, 120 Presbyterian families came over from the north of Ireland, and settled at Londonderry in New Hampshire, and elsewhere. In view of these facts it may be said that there is not a county in England of which the population is more purely English than the population of New England at the end of the eighteenth century. From long and careful research, Mr. Savage, the highest authority on this subject, concludes that more than 98 in 100 of the New England people at that time could trace their origin to England in the narrowest sense, excluding even Wales. As already observed, every English shire contributed something to the emigration, but there was a marked preponderance of people from the East Anglian counties. [[Sidenote: The exodus was purely English]
The population of New England was nearly as homogeneous in social condition as it was in blood. The emigration was preeminent for its respectability. Like the best part of the emigration to Virginia, it consisted largely of country squires and yeomen. The men who followed Winthrop were thrifty and prosperous in their old homes from which their devotion to an idea made them voluntary exiles. They attached so much importance to regular industry and decorous behaviour that for a long time the needy and shiftless people who usually make trouble in new colonies were not tolerated among them. Hence the early history of New England is remarkably free from those scenes of violence and disorder which have so often made hideous the first years of new communities. Of negro slaves there were very few, and these were employed wholly in domestic service; there were not enough of them to affect the industrial life of New England or to be worth mentioning as a class. Neither were there many of the wretched people, kidnapped from the jails and slums of English sea-ports, such as in those early days when negro labour was scarce, were sent by ship-loads to Virginia, to become the progenitors of the "white trash." There were a few indented white servants, usually of the class known as "redemptioners," or immigrants who voluntarily bound themselves to service for a stated time in order to defray the cost of their voyage from Europe. At a later time there were many of these "redemptioners" in the middle colonies, but in New England they were very few; and as no stigma of servitude was attached to manual labour, they were apt at the end of their terms of service to become independent farmers; thus they ceased to be recognizable as a distinct class of society. Nevertheless the common statement that no traces of the "mean white" are to be found in New England is perhaps somewhat too sweeping. Interspersed among those respectable and tidy mountain villages, once full of such vigorous life, one sometimes comes upon little isolated groups of wretched hovels whose local reputation is sufficiently indicated by such terse epithets as "Hardscrabble" or "Hell-huddle." Their denizens may in many instances be the degenerate offspring of a sound New England stock, but they sometimes show strong points of resemblance to that "white trash" which has come to be a recognizable strain of the English race; and one cannot help suspecting that while the New England colonies made every effort to keep out such riff raff, it may nevertheless have now and then crept in. However this may be, it cannot be said that this element ever formed a noticeable feature in the life of colonial New England. As regards their social derivation, the settlers of New England were homogeneous in character to a remarkable degree, and they were drawn from the sturdiest part of the English stock. In all history there has been no other instance of colonization so exclusively effected by picked and chosen men. The colonists knew this, and were proud of it, as well they might be. It was the simple truth that was spoken by William Stoughton when he said, in his election sermon of 1688: "God sifted a whole nation, that He might send choice grain into the wilderness." [[Sidenote: Respectable character of the emigration]
This matter comes to have more than a local interest, when we reflect that the 26,000 New Englanders of 1640 have in two hundred and fifty years increased to something like 15,000,000. From these men have come at least one-fourth of the present population of the United States. Striking as this fact may seem, it is perhaps less striking than the fact of the original migration when duly considered. In these times, when great steamers sail every day from European ports, bringing immigrants to a country not less advanced in material civilization than the country which they leave, the daily arrival of a thousand new citizens has come to be a commonplace event. But in the seventeenth century the transfer of more than twenty thousand well-to-do people within twenty years from their comfortable homes in England to the American wilderness was by no means a commonplace event. It reminds one of the migrations of ancient peoples, and in the quaint thought of our forefathers it was aptly likened to the exodus of Israel from the Egyptian house of bondage.
In this migration a principle of selection was at work which insured an extraordinary uniformity of character and of purpose among the settlers. To this uniformity of purpose, combined with complete homogeneity of race, is due the preponderance early acquired by New England in the history of the American people. In view of this, it is worth while to inquire what were the real aims of the settlers of New England. What was the common purpose which brought these men together in their resolve to create for themselves new homes in the wilderness?
This is a point concerning which there has been a great deal of popular misapprehension, and there has been no end of nonsense talked about it. It has been customary first to assume that the Puritan migration was undertaken in the interests of religious liberty, and then to upbraid the Puritans for forgetting all about religious liberty as soon as people came among them who disagreed with their opinions. But this view of the case is not supported by history. It is quite true that the Puritans were chargeable with gross intolerance; but it is not true that in this they were guilty of inconsistency. The notion that they came to New England for the purpose of establishing religious liberty, in any sense in which we should understand such a phrase, is entirely incorrect. It is neither more nor less than a bit of popular legend. If we mean by the phrase "religious liberty" a state of things in which opposite or contradictory opinions on questions of religion shall exist side by side in the same community, and in which everybody shall decide for himself how far he will conform to the customary religious observances, nothing could have been further from their thoughts. There is nothing they would have regarded with more genuine abhorrence. If they could have been forewarned by a prophetic voice of the general freedom—or, as they would have termed it, license—of thought and behaviour which prevails in this country to-day, they would very likely have abandoned their enterprise in despair.12The philosophic student of history often has occasion to see how God is wiser than man. In other words, he is often brought to realize how fortunate it is that the leaders in great historic events cannot foresee the remote results of the labours to which they have zealously consecrated their lives. It is part of the irony of human destiny that the end we really accomplish by striving with might and main is apt to be something quite different from the end we dreamed of as we started on our arduous labour. So it was with the Puritan settlers of New England. The religious liberty that we enjoy to-day is largely the consequence of their work; but it is a consequence that was unforeseen, while the direct and conscious aim of their labours was something that has never been realized, and probably never will be. [[Sidenote: The migration was not intended to promote what we call religious liberty]
The aim of Winthrop and his friends in coming to Massachusetts was the construction of a theocratic state which should be to Christians, under the New Testament dispensation, all that the theocracy of Moses and Joshua and Samuel had been to the Jews in Old Testament days. They should be to all intents and purposes freed from the jurisdiction of the Stuart king, and so far as possible the text of the Holy Scriptures should be their guide both in weighty matters of general legislation and in the shaping of the smallest details of daily life. In such a scheme there was no room for religious liberty as we understand it. No doubt the text of the Scriptures may be interpreted in many ways, but among these men there was a substantial agreement as to the important points, and nothing could have been further from their thoughts than to found a colony which should afford a field for new experiments in the art of right living. The state they were to found was to consist of a united body of believers; citizenship itself was to be co-extensive with church-membership; and in such a state there was apparently no more room for heretics than there was in Rome or Madrid. This was the idea which drew Winthrop and his followers from England at a time when—as events were soon to show—they might have stayed there and defied persecution with less trouble than it cost them to cross the ocean and found a new state. [[Sidenote: Theocratic ideal of the Puritans]
Such an ideal as this, considered by itself and apart from the concrete acts in which it was historically manifested, may seem like the merest fanaticism. But we cannot dismiss in this summary way a movement which has been at the source of so much that is great in American history: mere fanaticism has never produced such substantial results. Mere fanaticism is sure to aim at changing the constitution of human society in some essential point, to undo the work of evolution, and offer in some indistinctly apprehended fashion to remodel human life. But in these respects the Puritans were intensely conservative. The impulse by which they were animated was a profoundly ethical impulse—the desire to lead godly lives, and to drive out sin from the community—the same ethical impulse which animates the glowing pages of Hebrew poets and prophets, and which has given to the history and literature of Israel their commanding influence in the world. The Greek, says Matthew Arnold, held that the perfection of happiness was to have one's thoughts hit the mark; but the Hebrew held that it was to serve the Lord day and night. It was a touch of this inspiration that the Puritan caught from his earnest and reverent study of the sacred text, and that served to justify and intensify his yearning for a better life, and to give it the character of a grand and holy ideal. Yet with all this religious enthusiasm, the Puritan was in every fibre a practical Englishman with his full share of plain common-sense. He avoided the error of mediaeval anchorites and mystics in setting an exaggerated value upon otherworldliness. In his desire to win a crown of glory hereafter he did not forget that the present life has its simple duties, in the exact performance of which the welfare of society mainly consists. He likewise avoided the error of modern radicals who would remodel the fundamental institutions of property and of the family, and thus disturb the very groundwork of our ethical ideals. The Puritan's ethical conception of society was simply that which has grown up in the natural course of historical evolution, and which in its essential points is therefore intelligible to all men, and approved by the common-sense of men, however various may be the terminology—whether theological or scientific—in which it is expounded. For these reasons there was nothing essentially fanatical or impracticable in the Puritan scheme: in substance it was something that great bodies of men could at once put into practice, while its quaint and peculiar form was something that could be easily and naturally outgrown and set aside. [[Sidenote: The impulse which sought to realize itself in the Puritan ideal was an ethical impulse]
Yet another point in which the Puritan scheme of a theocratic society was rational and not fanatical was its method of interpreting the Scriptures. That method was essentially rationalistic in two ways. First, the Puritan laid no claim to the possession of any peculiar inspiration or divine light whereby he might be aided in ascertaining the meaning of the sacred text; but he used his reason just as he would in any matter of business, and he sought to convince, and expected to be convinced, by rational argument, and by nothing else. Secondly, it followed from this denial of any peculiar inspiration that there was no room in the Puritan commonwealth for anything like a priestly class, and that every individual must hold his own opinions at his own personal risk. The consequences of this rationalistic spirit have been very far-reaching. In the conviction that religious opinion must be consonant with reason, and that religious truth must be brought home to each individual by rational argument, we may find one of the chief causes of that peculiarly conservative yet flexible intelligence which has enabled the Puritan countries to take the lead in the civilized world of today. Free discussion of theological questions, when conducted with earnestness and reverence, and within certain generally acknowledged limits, was never discountenanced in New England. On the contrary, there has never been a society in the world in which theological problems have been so seriously and persistently discussed as in New England in the colonial period. The long sermons of the clergymen were usually learned and elaborate arguments of doctrinal points, bristling with quotations from the Bible, or from famous books of controversial divinity, and in the long winter evenings the questions thus raised afforded the occasion for lively debate in every household. The clergy were, as a rule, men of learning, able to read both Old and New Testaments in the original languages, and familiar with the best that had been talked and written, among Protestants at least, on theological subjects. They were also, for the most part, men of lofty character, and they were held in high social esteem on account of their character and scholarship, as well as on account of their clerical position. But in spite of the reverence in which they were commonly held, it would have been a thing quite unheard of for one of these pastors to urge an opinion from the pulpit on the sole ground of his personal authority or his superior knowledge of Scriptural exegesis. The hearers, too, were quick to detect novelties or variations in doctrine; and while there was perhaps no more than the ordinary human unwillingness to listen to a new thought merely because of its newness, it was above all things needful that the orthodox soundness of every new suggestion should be thoroughly and severely tested. This intense interest in doctrinal theology was part and parcel of the whole theory of New England life; because, as I have said, it was taken for granted that each individual must hold his own opinions at his own personal risk in the world to come. Such perpetual discussion, conducted, under such a stimulus, afforded in itself no mean school of intellectual training. Viewed in relation to the subsequent mental activity of New England, it may be said to have occupied a position somewhat similar to that which the polemics of the medieval schoolmen occupied in relation to the European thought of the Renaissance, and of the age of Hobbes and Descartes. At the same time the Puritan theory of life lay at the bottom of the whole system of popular education in New England. According to that theory, it was absolutely essential that every one should be taught from early childhood how to read and understand the Bible. So much instruction as this was assumed to be a sacred duty which the community owed to every child born within its jurisdiction. In ignorance, the Puritans maintained, lay the principal strength of popery in religion as well as of despotism in politics; and so, to the best of their lights, they cultivated knowledge with might and main. But in this energetic diffusion of knowledge they were unwittingly preparing the complete and irreparable destruction of the theocratic ideal of society which they had sought to realize by crossing the ocean and settling in New England. This universal education, and this perpetual discussion of theological questions, were no more compatible with rigid adherence to the Calvinistic system than with submission to the absolute rule of Rome. The inevitable result was the liberal and enlightened Protestantism which is characteristic of the best American society at the present day, and which is continually growing more liberal as it grows more enlightened—a Protestantism which, in the natural course of development, is coming to realize the noble ideal of Roger Williams, but from the very thought of which such men as Winthrop and Cotton and Endicott would have shrunk with dismay. [[Sidenote: In interpreting Scripture, the Puritan appealed to his reason] [[Sidenote: Value of theological discussion]
In this connection it is interesting to note the similarity between the experience of the Puritans in New England and in Scotland with respect to the influence of their religious theory of life upon general education. Nowhere has Puritanism, with its keen intelligence and its iron tenacity of purpose, played a greater part than it has played in the history of Scotland. And one need not fear contradiction in saying that no other people in modern times, in proportion to their numbers, have achieved so much in all departments of human activity as the people of Scotland have achieved. It would be superfluous to mention the preeminence of Scotland in the industrial arts since the days of James Watt, or to recount the glorious names in philosophy, in history, in poetry and romance, and in every department of science, which since the middle of the eighteenth century have made the country of Burns and Scott, of Hume and Adam Smith, of Black and Hunter and Hutton and Lyell, illustrious for all future time. Now this period of magnificent intellectual fruition in Scotland was preceded by a period of Calvinistic orthodoxy quite as rigorous as that of New England. The ministers of the Scotch Kirk in the seventeenth century cherished a theocratic ideal of society not unlike that which the colonists of New England aimed at realizing. There was the same austerity, the same intolerance, the same narrowness of interests, in Scotland that there was in New England. Mr. Buckle, in the book which thirty years ago seemed so great and stimulating, gave us a graphic picture of this state of society, and the only thing which he could find to say about it, as the result of his elaborate survey, was that the spirit of the Scotch Kirk was as thoroughly hostile to human progress as the spirit of the Spanish Inquisition! If this were really so, it would be difficult indeed to account for the period of brilliant mental activity which immediately followed. But in reality the Puritan theory of life led to general education in Scotland as it did in New England, and for precisely the same reasons, while the effects of theological discussion in breaking down the old Calvinistic exclusiveness have been illustrated in the history of Edinburgh as well as in the history of Boston. [[Sidenote: Comparison with the case of Scotland]
It is well for us to bear in mind the foregoing considerations as we deal with the history of the short-lived New England Confederacy. The story is full of instances of an intolerant and domineering spirit, especially on the part of Massachusetts, and now and then this spirit breaks forth in ugly acts of persecution. In considering these facts, it is well to remember that we are observing the workings of a system which contained within itself a curative principle; and it is further interesting to observe how political circumstances contributed to modify the Puritan ideal, gradually breaking down the old theocratic exclusiveness and strengthening the spirit of religious liberty.
Scarcely had the first New England colonies been established when it was found desirable to unite them into some kind of a confederation. It is worthy of note that the separate existence of so many colonies was at the outset largely the result of religious differences. The uniformity of purpose, great as it was, fell far short of completeness. [[Sidenote: Existence of so many colonies due to slight religious differences]
Could all have agreed, or had there been religious toleration in the modern sense, there was still room enough for all in Massachusetts; and a compact settlement would have been in much less danger from the Indians. But in the founding of Connecticut the theocratic idea had less weight, and in the founding of New Haven it had more weight, than in Massachusetts. The existence of Rhode Island was based upon that principle of full toleration which the three colonies just mentioned alike abhorred, and its first settlers were people banished from Massachusetts. With regard to toleration Plymouth occupied a middle ground; without admitting the principles of Williams, the people of that colony were still fairly tolerant in practice. Of the four towns of New Hampshire, two had been founded by Antinomians driven from Boston, and two by Episcopal friends of Mason and Gorges. It was impossible that neighbouring communities, characterized by such differences of opinion, but otherwise homogeneous in race and in social condition, should fail to react upon one another and to liberalize one another. Still more was this true when they attempted to enter into a political union. When, for example, Massachusetts in 1641-43 annexed the New Hampshire townships, she was of necessity obliged to relax in their case her policy of insisting upon religious conformity as a test of citizenship. So in forming the New England Confederacy, there were some matters of dispute that had to be passed over by mutual consent or connivance. [[Sidenote: It led to a notable attempt at federation]
The same causes which had spread the English settlements over so wide a territory now led, as an indirect result, to their partial union into a confederacy. The immediate consequence of the westward movement had been an Indian war. Several savage tribes were now interspersed between the settlements, so that it became desirable that the military force should be brought, as far as possible, under one management. The colony of New Netherlands, moreover, had begun to assume importance, and the settlements west of the Connecticut river had already occasioned hard words between Dutch and English, which might at any moment be followed by blows. In the French colonies at the north, with their extensive Indian alliances under Jesuit guidance, the Puritans saw a rival power which was likely in course of time to prove troublesome. With a view to more efficient self-defence, therefore, in 1643 the four colonies of Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven formed themselves into a league, under the style of "The United Colonies of New England." These four little states now contained thirty-nine towns, with an aggregate population of 24,000. To the northeast of Massachusetts, which now extended to the Piscataqua, a small colony had at length been constituted under a proprietary charter somewhat similar to that held by the Calverts in Maryland. Of this new province or palatinate of Maine the aged Sir Ferdinando Gorges was Lord Proprietary, and he had undertaken not only to establish the Church of England there, but also to introduce usages of feudal jurisdiction like those remaining in the old country. Such a community was not likely to join the Confederacy; apart from other reasons, its proprietary constitution and the feud between the Puritans and Gorges would have been sufficient obstacles.
As for Rhode Island, on the other hand, it was regarded with strong dislike by the other colonies. It was a curious and noteworthy consequence of the circumstances under which this little state was founded that for a long time it became the refuge of all the fanatical and turbulent people who could not submit to the strict and orderly governments of Connecticut or Massachusetts. All extremes met on Narragansett bay. There were not only sensible advocates of religious liberty, but theocrats as well who saw flaws in the theocracy of other Puritans. The English world was then in a state of theological fermentation. People who fancied themselves favoured with direct revelations from Heaven; people who thought it right to keep the seventh day of the week as a Sabbath instead of the first day; people who cherished a special predilection for the Apocalypse and the Book of Daniel; people with queer views about property and government; people who advocated either too little marriage or too much marriage; all such eccentric characters as are apt to come to the surface in periods of religious excitement found in Rhode Island a favoured spot where they could prophesy without let or hindrance. But the immediate practical result of so much discordance in opinion was the impossibility of founding a strong and well-ordered government. The early history of Rhode Island was marked by enough of turbulence to suggest the question whether, after all, at the bottom of the Puritan's refusal to recognize the doctrine of private inspiration, or to tolerate indiscriminately all sorts of opinions, there may not have been a grain of shrewd political sense not ill adapted to the social condition of the seventeenth century. In 1644 and again in 1648 the Narragansett settlers asked leave to join the Confederacy; but the request was refused on the ground that they had no stable government of their own. They were offered the alternative of voluntary annexation either to Massachusetts or to Plymouth, or of staying out in the cold; and they chose the latter course. Early in 1643 they had sent Roger Williams over to England to obtain a charter for Rhode Island. In that year Parliament created a Board of Commissioners, with the Earl of Warwick at its head, for the superintendence of colonial affairs; and nothing could better illustrate the loose and reckless manner in which American questions were treated in England than the first proceedings of this board. It gave an early instance of British carelessness in matters of American geography. In December, 1643, it granted to Massachusetts all the territory on the mainland of Narragansett bay; and in the following March it incorporated the townships of Newport and Portsmouth, which stood on the island, together with Providence, which stood on the mainland, into an independent colony empowered to frame a government and make laws for itself. With this second document Williams returned to Providence in the autumn of 1644. Just how far it was intended to cancel the first one, nobody could tell, but it plainly afforded an occasion for a conflict of claims. [[Sidenote: Turbulence of dissent in Rhode Island] [[Sidenote: The Earl of Warwick and his Board of Commissioners]
The league of the four colonies is interesting as the first American experiment in federation. By the articles it was agreed that each colony should retain full independence so far as concerned the management of its internal affairs, but that the confederate government should have entire control over all dealings with the Indians or with foreign powers. The administration of the league was put into the hands of a board of eight Federal Commissioners, two from each colony. The commissioners were required to be church-members in good standing. They could choose for themselves a president or chairman out of their own number, but such a president was to have no more power than the other members of the Board. If any measure were to come up concerning which the commissioners could not agree, it was to be referred for consideration to the legislatures or general courts of the four colonies. Expenses for war were to be charged to each colony in proportion to the number of males in each between sixteen years of age and sixty. A meeting of the Board might be summoned by any two magistrates whenever the public safety might seem to require it; but a regular meeting was to be held once every year.
In this scheme of confederacy all power of taxation was expressly left to the several colonies. The scheme provided for a mere league, not for a federal union. The government of the Commissioners acted only upon the local governments, not upon individuals. The Board had thus but little executive power, and was hardly more than a consulting body. Another source of weakness in the confederacy was the overwhelming preponderance of Massachusetts. Of the 24,000 people in the confederation, 15,000 belonged to Massachusetts, while the other three colonies had only about 3,000 each. Massachusetts accordingly had to carry the heaviest burden, both in the furnishing of soldiers and in the payment of war expenses, while in the direction of affairs she had no more authority than one of the small colonies. As a natural consequence, Massachusetts tried to exert more authority than she was entitled to by the articles of confederation; and such conduct was not unnaturally resented by the small colonies, as betokening an unfair and domineering spirit. In spite of these drawbacks, however, the league was of great value to New England. On many occasions it worked well as a high court of jurisdiction, and it made the military strength of the colonies more available than it would otherwise have been. But for the interference of the British government, which brought it to an untimely end, the Confederacy might have been gradually amended so as to become enduring. After its downfall it was pleasantly remembered by the people of New England; in times of trouble their thoughts reverted to it; and the historian must in fairness assign it some share in preparing men's minds for the greater work of federation which was achieved before the end of the following century. [[Sidenote: It was only a league, not a federal union]
The formation of such a confederacy certainly involved something very like a tacit assumption of sovereignty on the part of the four colonies. It is worthy of note that they did not take the trouble to ask the permission of the home government in advance. They did as they pleased, and then defended their action afterward. In England the act of confederation was regarded with jealousy and distrust. But Edward Winslow, who was sent over to London to defend the colonies, pithily said: "If we in America should forbear to unite for offence and defence against a common enemy till we have leave from England, our throats might be all cut before the messenger would be half seas through." Whether such considerations would have had weight with Charles I. or not was now of little consequence. His power of making mischief soon came to an end, and from the liberal and sagacious policy of Cromwell the Confederacy had not much to fear. Nevertheless the fall of Charles I. brought up for the first time that question which a century later was to acquire surpassing interest,—the question as to the supremacy of Parliament over the colonies.
Down to this time the supreme control over colonial affairs had been in the hands of the king and his privy council, and the Parliament had not disputed it. In 1624 they had grumbled at James I.'s high-handed suppression of the Virginia Company, but they had not gone so far as to call in question the king's supreme authority over the colonies. In 1628, in a petition to Charles I. relating to the Bermudas, they had fully admitted this royal authority. But the fall of Charles I. for the moment changed all this. Among the royal powers devolved upon Parliament was the prerogative of superintending the affairs of the colonies. Such, at least, was the theory held in England, and it is not easy to see how any other theory could logically have been held; but the Americans never formally admitted it, and in practice they continued to behave toward Parliament very much as they had behaved toward the crown, yielding just as little obedience as possible. When the Earl of Warwick's commissioners in 1644 seized upon a royalist vessel in Boston harbour, the legislature of Massachusetts debated the question whether it was compatible with the dignity of the colony to permit such an act of sovereignty on the part of Parliament. It was decided to wink at the proceeding, on account of the strong sympathy between Massachusetts and the Parliament which was overthrowing the king. At the same time the legislature sent over to London a skilfully worded protest against any like exercise of power in future. In 1651 Parliament ordered Massachusetts to surrender the charter obtained from Charles I. and take out a new one from Parliament, in which the relations of the colony to the home government should be made the subject of fresh and more precise definition. To this request the colony for more than a year vouchsafed no answer; and finally, when it became necessary to do something, instead of sending back the charter, the legislature sent back a memorial, setting forth that the people of Massachusetts were quite contented with their form of government, and hoped that no change would be made in it. War between England and Holland, and the difficult political problems which beset the brief rule of Cromwell, prevented the question from coming to an issue, and Massachusetts was enabled to preserve her independent and somewhat haughty attitude. [[Sidenote: Fall of Charles I. brings up the question as to supremacy of Parliament over the colonies]
During the whole period of the Confederacy, however, disputes kept coming up which through endless crooked ramifications were apt to end in an appeal to the home government, and thus raise again and again the question as to the extent of its imperial supremacy. For our present purpose, it is enough to mention three of these cases: 1, the adventures of Samuel Gorton; 2, the Presbyterian cabal; 3, the persecution of the Quakers. Other cases in point are those of John Clarke and the Baptists, and the relations of Massachusetts to the northeastern settlements; but as it is not my purpose here to make a complete outline of New England history, the three cases enumerated will suffice.
The first case shows, in a curious and instructive way, how religious dissensions were apt to be complicated with threats of an Indian war on the one hand and peril from Great Britain on the other; and as we come to realize the triple danger, we can perhaps make some allowances for the high-handed measures with which the Puritan governments sometimes sought to avert it. [Genesis of the persecuting spirit]
As I have elsewhere tried to show, the genesis of the persecuting spirit is to be found in the conditions of primitive society, where "above all things the prime social and political necessity is social cohesion within the tribal limits, for unless such social cohesion be maintained, the very existence of the tribe is likely to be extinguished in bloodshed." The persecuting spirit "began to pass away after men had become organized into great nations, covering a vast extent of territory, and secured by their concentrated military strength against the gravest dangers of barbaric attack."13
Now as regards these considerations, the Puritan communities in the New England wilderness were to some slight extent influenced by such conditions as used to prevail in primitive society; and this will help us to understand the treatment of the Antinomians and such cases as that with which we have now to deal.
Among the supporters of Mrs. Hutchinson, after her arrival at Aquedneck, was a sincere and courageous, but incoherent and crotchetty man named Samuel Gorton. [[Sidenote: Samuel Gorton]
In the denunciatory language of that day he was called a "proud and pestilent seducer," or, as the modern newspaper would say, a "crank." It is well to make due allowances for the prejudice so conspicuous in the accounts given by his enemies, who felt obliged to justify their harsh treatment of him. But we have also his own writings from which to form an opinion as to his character and views. Lucidity, indeed, was not one of his strong points as a writer, and the drift of his argument is not always easy to decipher; but he seems to have had some points of contact with the Familists, a sect established in the sixteenth century in Holland. The Familists held that the essence of religion consists not in adherence to any particular creed or ritual, but in cherishing the spirit of divine love. The general adoption of this point of view was to inaugurate a third dispensation, superior to those of Moses and Christ, the dispensation of the Holy Ghost. The value of the Bible lay not so much in the literal truth of its texts as in their spiritual import; and by the union of believers with Christ they came to share in the ineffable perfection of the Godhead. There is much that is modern and enlightened in such views, which Gorton seems to some extent to have shared. He certainly set little store by ritual observances and maintained the equal right of laymen with clergymen to preach the gospel. Himself a London clothier, and thanking God that he had not been brought up in "the schools of human learning," he set up as a preacher without ordination, and styled himself "professor of the mysteries of Christ." He seems to have cherished that doctrine of private inspiration which the Puritans especially abhorred. It is not likely that he had any distinct comprehension of his own views, for distinctness was just what they lacked.14But they were such as in the seventeenth century could not fail to arouse fierce antagonism, and if it was true that wherever there was a government Gorton was against it, perhaps that only shows that wherever there was a government it was sure to be against him.
In the case of such men as Gorton, however,—and the type is by no means an uncommon one,—their temperament usually has much more to do with getting them into trouble than their opinions. Gorton's temperament was such as to keep him always in an atmosphere of strife. Other heresiarchs suffered persecution in Massachusetts, but Gorton was in hot water everywhere. His arrival in any community was the signal for an immediate disturbance of the peace. His troubles began in Plymouth, where the wife of the pastor preferred his teachings to those of her husband. In 1638 he fled to Aquedneck, where his first achievement was a schism among Mrs. Hutchinson's followers, which ended in some staying to found the town of Portsmouth while others went away to found Newport. Presently Portsmouth found him intolerable, flogged and banished him, and after his departure was able to make up its quarrel with Newport. He next made his way with a few followers to Pawtuxet, within the jurisdiction of Providence, and now it is the broad-minded and gentle Roger Williams who complains of his "bewitching and madding poor Providence." The question is here suggested what could it have been in Gorton's teaching that enabled him thus to "bewitch" these little communities? We may be sure that it could not have been the element of modern liberalism suggested in the Familistic doctrines above cited. That was the feature then least likely to appeal to the minds of common people, and most likely to appeal to Williams. More probably such success as Gorton had in winning followers was due to some of the mystical rubbish which abounds in his pages and finds in a modern mind no doorway through which to enter. [[Sidenote: He flees to Aquedneck and is banished thence]
Williams disapproved of Gorton, but was true to his principles of toleration and would not take part in any attempt to silence him. But in 1641 we find thirteen leading citizens of Providence, headed by William Arnold,15sending a memorial to Boston, asking for assistance and counsel in regard to this disturber of the peace. How was Massachusetts to treat such an appeal? She could not presume to meddle with the affair unless she could have permanent jurisdiction over Pawtuxet; otherwise she was a mere intruder. How strong a side-light does this little incident throw upon the history of the Roman republic, and of all relatively strong communities when confronted with the problem of preserving order in neighbouring states that are too weak to preserve it for themselves! Arnold's argument, in his appeal to Massachusetts, was precisely the same as that by which the latter colony excused herself for banishing the Antinomians. He simply says that Gorton and his company "are not fit persons to be received, and made members of a body in so weak a state as our town is in at present;" and he adds, "There is no state but in the first place will seek to preserve its own safety and peace." Whatever might be the abstract merits of Gorton's opinions, his conduct was politically dangerous; and accordingly the jurisdiction over Pawtuxet was formally conceded to Massachusetts. Thereupon that colony, assuming jurisdiction, summoned Gorton and his men to Boston, to prove their title to the lands they occupied. They of course regarded the summons as a flagrant usurpation of authority, and instead of obeying it they withdrew to Shawomet, on the western shore of Narragansett bay, where they bought a tract of land from the principal sachem of the Narragansetts, Miantonomo. The immediate rule over this land belonged to two inferior chiefs, who ratified the sale at the time, but six months afterward disavowed the ratification, on the ground that it had been given under duress from their overlord Miantonomo. Here was a state of things which might easily bring on an Indian war. The two chiefs appealed to Massachusetts for protection, and were accordingly summoned, along with Miantonomo, to a hearing at Boston. Here we see how a kind of English protectorate over the native tribes had begun to grow up so soon after the destruction of the Pequots. Such a result was inevitable. After hearing the arguments, the legislature decided to defend the two chiefs, provided they would put themselves under the jurisdiction of Massachusetts. This was done, while further complaints against Gorton came from the citizens of Providence. Gorton and his men were now peremptorily summoned to Boston to show cause why they should not surrender their land at Shawomet and to answer the charges against them. On receiving from Gorton a defiant reply, couched in terms which some thought blasphemous, the government of Massachusetts prepared to use force. [[Sidenote: Providence protests against him] [[Sidenote: He flees to Shawomet, where he buys land of the Indians]
Meanwhile the unfortunate Miantonomo had rushed upon his doom. The annihilation of the Pequots had left the Mohegans and Narragansetts contending for the foremost place among the native tribes. Between the rival sachems, Uncas and Miantonomo, the hatred was deep and deadly. As soon as the Mohegan perceived that trouble was brewing between Miantonomo and the government at Boston, he improved the occasion by gathering a few Narragansett scalps. Miantonomo now took the war-path and was totally defeated by Uncas in a battle on the Great Plain in the present township of Norwich. Encumbered with a coat of mail which his friend Gorton had given him, Miantonomo was overtaken and captured. By ordinary Indian usage he would have been put to death with fiendish torments, as soon as due preparations could be made and a fit company assembled to gloat over his agony; but Gorton sent a messenger to Uncas, threatening dire vengeance if harm were done to his ally. This message puzzled the Mohegan chief. The appearance of a schism in the English counsels was more than he could quite fathom. When the affair had somewhat more fully developed itself, some of the Indians spoke of the white men as divided into two rival tribes, the Gortonoges and Wattaconoges.16Roger Williams tells us that the latter term, applied to the men of Boston, meant coat-wearers. Whether it is to be inferred that the Gortonoges went about in what in modern parlance would be called their "shirt-sleeves," the reader must decide. [[Sidenote: Miantonomo and Uncas]
In his perplexity Uncas took his prisoner to Hartford, and afterward, upon the advice of the governor and council, sent him to Boston, that his fate might be determined by the Federal Commissioners who were there holding their first regular meeting. It was now the turn of the commissioners to be perplexed. According to English law there was no good reason for putting Miantonomo to death. The question was whether they should interfere with the Indian custom by which his life was already forfeit to his captor. The magistrates already suspected the Narragansetts of cherishing hostile designs. To set their sachem at liberty, especially while the Gorton affair remained unsettled, might be dangerous; and it would be likely to alienate Uncas from the English. In their embarrassment the commissioners sought spiritual guidance. A synod of forty or fifty clergymen, from all parts of New England, was in session at Boston, and the question was referred to a committee of five of their number. The decision was prompt that Miantonomo must die. He was sent back to Hartford to be slain by Uncas, but two messengers accompanied him, to see that no tortures were inflicted. A select band of Mohegan warriors journeyed through the forest with the prisoner and the two Englishmen, until they came to the plain where the battle had been fought. Then at a signal from Uncas, the warrior walking behind Miantonomo silently lifted his tomahawk and sank it into the brain of the victim who fell dead without a groan. Uncas cut a warm slice from the shoulder and greedily devoured it, declaring that the flesh of his enemy was the sweetest of meat and gave strength to his heart. Miantonomo was buried there on the scene of his defeat, which has ever since been known as the Sachem's Plain. This was in September, 1643, and for years afterward, in that month, parties of Narragansetts used to visit the spot and with frantic gestures and hideous yells lament their fallen leader. A heap of stones was raised over the grave, and no Narragansett came near it without adding to the pile. After many a summer had passed and the red men had disappeared from the land, a Yankee farmer, with whom thrift prevailed over sentiment, cleared away the mound and used the stones for the foundation of his new barn.17[[Sidenote: Death of Miantonomo]
One cannot regard this affair as altogether creditable to the Federal Commissioners and their clerical advisers. One of the clearest-headed and most impartial students of our history observes that "if the English were to meddle in the matter at all, it was their clear duty to enforce as far as might be the principles recognized by civilized men. When they accepted the appeal made by Uncas they shifted the responsibility from the Mohegan chief to themselves."18The decision was doubtless based purely upon grounds of policy. Miantonomo was put out of the way because he was believed to be dangerous. In the thirst for revenge that was aroused among the Narragansetts there was an alternative source of danger, to which I shall hereafter refer.19It is difficult now to decide, as a mere question of safe policy, what the English ought to have done. The chance of being dragged into an Indian war, through the feud between Narragansetts and Mohegans, was always imminent. The policy which condemned Miantonomo was one of timidity, and fear is merciless.
The Federal Commissioners heartily approved the conduct of Massachusetts toward Gorton, and adopted it in the name of the United Colonies. After a formal warning, which passed unheeded, a company of forty men, under Edward Johnson of Woburn and two other officers, was sent to Shawomet. Some worthy citizens of Providence essayed to play the part of mediators, and after some parley the Gortonites offered to submit to arbitration. The proposal was conveyed to Boston, and the clergy were again consulted. They declared it beneath the dignity of Massachusetts to negotiate "with a few fugitives living without law or government," and they would no more compound with Gorton's "blasphemous revilings" than they would bargain with the Evil One. The community must be "purged" of such wickedness, either by repentance or by punishment. The ministers felt that God would hold the community responsible for Gorton and visit calamities upon them unless he were silenced.20The arbitration was refused, Gorton's blockhouse was besieged and captured, and the agitator was carried with nine of his followers to Boston, where they were speedily convicted of heresy and sedition. Before passing judgment the General Court as usual consulted with the clergy who recommended a sentence of death. Their advice was adopted by the assistants, but the deputies were more merciful, and the heretics were sentenced to imprisonment at the pleasure of the court. In this difference between the assistants and the deputies, we observe an early symptom of that popular revolt against the ascendancy of the clergy which was by and by to become so much more conspicuous and effective in the affair of the Quakers. Another symptom might be seen in the circumstance that so much sympathy was expressed for the Gortonites, especially by women, that after some months of imprisonment and abuse the heretics were banished under penalty of death. [[Sidenote: Trial and sentence of the heretics]
Gorton now went to England and laid his tale of woe before the parliamentary Board of Commissioners. The Earl of Warwick behaved with moderation. He declined to commit himself to an opinion as to the merits of the quarrel, but Gorton's title to Shawomet was confirmed. He returned to Boston with an order to the government to allow him to pass unmolested through Massachusetts, and hereafter to protect him in the possession of Shawomet. If this little commonwealth of 15,000 inhabitants had been a nation as powerful as France, she could not have treated the message more haughtily. By a majority of one vote it was decided not to refuse so trifling a favour as a passage through the country for just this once; but as for protecting the new town of Warwick which the Gortonites proceeded to found at Shawomet, although it was several times threatened by the Indians, and the settlers appealed to the parliamentary order, that order Massachusetts flatly and doggedly refused to obey.21[[Sidenote: Gorton appeals to Parliament]
In the discussions of which these years were so full, "King Winthrop," as his enemy Morton called him, used some very significant language. By a curious legal fiction of the Massachusetts charter the colonists were supposed to hold their land as in the manor of East Greenwich near London, and it was argued that they were represented in Parliament by the members of the county or borough which contained that manor, and were accordingly subject to the jurisdiction of Parliament. It was further argued that since the king had no absolute sovereignty independent of Parliament he could not by charter impart any such independent sovereignty to others. Winthrop did not dispute these points, but observed that the safety of the commonwealth was the supreme law, and if in the interests of that safety it should be found necessary to renounce the authority of Parliament, the colonists would be justified in doing so. [[Sidenote: Winthrop's prophetic opinion]22This was essentially the same doctrine as was set forth ninety-nine years later by young Samuel Adams in his Commencement Oration at Harvard.
The case of the Presbyterian cabal admits of briefer treatment than that of Gorton. There had now come to be many persons in Massachusetts who disapproved of the provision which restricted the suffrage to members of the Independent or Congregational churches of New England, and in 1646 the views of these people were presented in a petition to the General Court. The petitioners asked "that their civil disabilities might be removed, and that all members of the churches of England and Scotland might be admitted to communion with the New England churches. If this could not be granted they prayed to be released from all civil burdens. Should the court refuse to entertain their complaint, they would be obliged to bring their case before Parliament."23The leading signers of this menacing petition were William Vassall, Samuel Maverick, and The Presbyterian cabal. Dr. Robert Child. Maverick we have already met. From the day when the ships of the first Puritan settlers had sailed past his log fortress on Noddle's Island, he had been their enemy; "a man of loving and curteous behaviour," says Johnson, "very ready to entertaine strangers, yet an enemy to the reformation in hand, being strong for the lordly prelatical power." Vassall was not a denizen of Massachusetts, but lived in Scituate, in the colony of Plymouth, where there were no such restrictions upon the suffrage. Child was a learned physician who after a good deal of roaming about the world had lately taken it into his head to come and see what sort of a place Massachusetts was. Although these names were therefore not such as to lend weight to such a petition, their request would seem at first sight reasonable enough. At a superficial glance it seems conceived in a modern spirit of liberalism. In reality it was nothing of the sort. In England it was just the critical moment of the struggle between Presbyterians and Independents which had come in to complicate the issues of the great civil war. Vassall, Child, and Maverick seem to have been the leading spirits in a cabal for the establishment of Presbyterianism in New England, and in their petition they simply took advantage of the discontent of the disfranchised citizens in Massachusetts in order to put in an entering wedge. This was thoroughly understood by the legislature of Massachusetts, and accordingly the petition was dismissed and the petitioners were roundly fined. Just as Child was about to start for England with his grievances, the magistrates overhauled his papers and discovered a petition to the parliamentary Board of Commissioners, suggesting that Presbyterianism should be established in New England, and that a viceroy or governor-general should be appointed to rule there. To the men of Massachusetts this last suggestion was a crowning horror. It seemed scarcely less than treason. The signers of this petition were the same who had signed the petition to the General Court. They were now fined still more heavily and imprisoned for six months. By and by they found their way, one after another, to London, while the colonists sent Edward Winslow, of Plymouth, as an advocate to thwart their schemes. Winslow was assailed by Child's brother in a spicy pamphlet entitled "New England's Jonas cast up at London," and replied after the same sort, entitling his pamphlet "New England's Salamander discovered." The cabal accomplished nothing because of the decisive defeat of Presbyterianism in England. "Pride's Purge" settled all that. The petition of Vassall and his friends was the occasion for the meeting of a synod of churches at Cambridge, in order to complete the organization of Congregationalism. In 1648 the work of the synod was embodied in the famous Cambridge Platform, which adopted the Westminster Confession as its creed, carefully defined the powers of the clergy, and declared it to be the duty of magistrates to suppress heresy. In 1649 the General Court laid this platform before the congregations; in 1651 it was adopted; and this event may be regarded as completing the theocratic organization of the Puritan commonwealth in Massachusetts. [[Sidenote: The Cambridge Platform; deaths of Winthrop and Cotton]