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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12767 ***
+
+THE BEGINNINGS OF NEW ENGLAND
+
+OR THE PURITAN THEOCRACY IN ITS RELATIONS TO CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
+
+BY
+
+JOHN FISKE
+
+"The Lord Christ intends to achieve greater matters by this little
+handful than the world is aware of." EDWARD JOHNSON, _Wonder-Working
+Providence of Zion's Saviour in New England_ 1654
+
+1892
+
+
+
+
+To
+
+MY DEAR CLASSMATES,
+
+
+BENJAMIN THOMPSON FROTHINGHAM,
+
+WILLIAM AUGUSTUS WHITE,
+
+AND
+
+FREDERIC CROMWELL,
+
+I DEDICATE THIS BOOK.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+This book contains the substance of the lectures originally given at
+the Washington University, St. Louis, in May, 1887, in the course of my
+annual visit to that institution as University Professor of American
+History. The lectures were repeated in the following month of June at
+Portland, Oregon, and since then either the whole course, or one or more
+of the lectures, have been given in Boston, Newton, Milton, Chelsea,
+New Bedford, Lowell, Worcester, Springfield, and Pittsfield, Mass.;
+Farmington, Middletown, and Stamford, Conn.; New York, Brooklyn, and
+Tarrytown, N.Y.; Philadelphia and Ogontz, Pa.; Wilmington, Del.;
+Chicago, 111.; San Francisco and Oakland, Cal.
+
+In this sketch of the circumstances which attended the settlement of New
+England, I have purposely omitted many details which in a formal history
+of that period would need to be included. It has been my aim to give the
+outline of such a narrative as to indicate the principles at work in
+the history of New England down to the Revolution of 1689. When I was
+writing the lectures I had just been reading, with much interest, the
+work of my former pupil, Mr. Brooks Adams, entitled "The Emancipation of
+Massachusetts."
+
+With the specific conclusions set forth in that book I found myself
+often agreeing, but it seemed to me that the general aspect of the case
+would be considerably modified and perhaps somewhat more adequately
+presented by enlarging the field of view. In forming historical
+judgments a great deal depends upon our perspective. Out of the very
+imperfect human nature which is so slowly and painfully casting off the
+original sin of its inheritance from primeval savagery, it is scarcely
+possible in any age to get a result which will look quite satisfactory
+to the men of a riper and more enlightened age. Fortunately we can learn
+something from the stumblings of our forefathers, and a good many
+things seem quite clear to us to-day which two centuries ago were only
+beginning to be dimly discerned by a few of the keenest and boldest
+spirits. The faults of the Puritan theocracy, which found its most
+complete development in Massachusetts, are so glaring that it is idle to
+seek to palliate them or to explain them away. But if we would really
+understand what was going on in the Puritan world of the seventeenth
+century, and how a better state of things has grown out of it, we must
+endeavour to distinguish and define the elements of wholesome strength
+in that theocracy no less than its elements of crudity and weakness.
+
+The first chapter, on "The Roman Idea and the English Idea," contains a
+somewhat more developed statement of the points briefly indicated in the
+thirteenth section (pp. 85-95) of "The Destiny of Man." As all of the
+present book, except the first chapter, was written here under the
+shadow of the Washington University, I take pleasure in dating it from
+this charming and hospitable city where I have passed some of the most
+delightful hours of my life.
+
+St. Louis, April 15, 1889.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE ROMAN IDEA AND THE ENGLISH IDEA.
+
+When did the Roman Empire come to an end? ... 1-3
+
+Meaning of Odovakar's work ... 3
+
+The Holy Roman Empire ... 4, 5
+
+Gradual shifting of primacy from the men who spoke Latin, and their
+descendants, to the men who speak English ... 6-8
+
+Political history is the history of nation-making ... 8, 9
+
+The ORIENTAL method of nation-making; _conquest without incorporation_
+... 9
+
+Illustrations from eastern despotisms ... 10
+
+And from the Moors in Spain ... 11
+
+The ROMAN method of nation-making; _conquest with incorporation, but
+without representation_ ... 12
+
+Its slow development ... 13
+
+Vices in the Roman system. ... 14
+
+Its fundamental defect ... 15
+
+It knew nothing of political power delegated by the people to
+representatives ... 16
+
+And therefore the expansion of its dominion ended in a centralized
+Despotism ... 16
+
+Which entailed the danger that human life might come to stagnate in
+Europe, as it had done in Asia ... 17
+
+The danger was warded off by the Germanic invasions, which, however,
+threatened to undo the work which the Empire had done in organizing
+European society ... 17
+
+But such disintegration was prevented by the sway which the Roman Church
+had come to exercise over the European mind ... 18
+
+The wonderful thirteenth century ... 19
+
+The ENGLISH method of nation-making; _incorporation with representation_
+... 20
+
+Pacific tendencies of federalism ... 21
+
+Failure of Greek attempts at federation ... 22
+
+Fallacy of the notion that republics must be small ... 23
+
+"It is not the business of a government to support its people, but of
+the people to support their government" ... 24
+
+Teutonic March-meetings and representative assemblies ... 25
+
+Peculiarity of the Teutonic conquest of Britain ... 26, 27
+
+Survival and development of the Teutonic representative assembly in
+England ... 28
+
+Primitive Teutonic institutions less modified in England than in Germany
+... 29
+
+Some effects of the Norman conquest of England ... 30
+
+The Barons' War and the first House of Commons ... 31
+
+Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty ... 32
+
+Conflict between Roman Idea and English Idea begins to become clearly
+visible in the thirteenth century ... 33
+
+Decline of mediaeval Empire and Church with the growth of modern
+nationalities ... 34
+
+Overthrow of feudalism, and increasing power of the crown ... 35
+
+Formidable strength of the Roman Idea ... 36
+
+Had it not been for the Puritans, political liberty would probably have
+disappeared from the world ... 37
+
+Beginnings of Protestantism in the thirteenth century ... 38
+
+The Cathari, or Puritans of the Eastern Empire ... 39
+
+The Albigenses ... 40
+
+Effects of persecution; its feebleness in England ... 41
+
+Wyclif and the Lollards ... 42
+
+Political character of Henry VIII.'s revolt against Rome ... 43
+
+The yeoman Hugh Latimer ... 44
+
+The moment of Cromwell's triumph was the most critical moment in history
+... 45
+
+Contrast with France; fate of the Huguenots ... 46, 47
+
+Victory of the English Idea ... 48
+
+Significance of the Puritan Exodus ... 49
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE PURITAN EXODUS.
+
+Influence of Puritanism upon modern Europe ... 50, 51
+
+Work of the Lollards ... 52
+
+They made the Bible the first truly popular literature in England ...
+53, 54
+
+The English version of the Bible ... 54, 55
+
+Secret of Henry VIII.'s swift success in his revolt against Rome ... 56
+
+Effects of the persecution under Mary ... 57
+
+Calvin's theology in its political bearings ... 58, 59
+
+Elizabeth's policy and its effects ... 60, 61
+
+Puritan sea-rovers ... 61
+
+Geographical distribution of Puritanism in England; it was strongest in
+the eastern counties ... 62
+
+Preponderance of East Anglia in the Puritan exodus ... 63
+
+Familiar features of East Anglia to the visitor from New England ... 64
+
+Puritanism was not intentionally allied with liberalism ... 65
+
+Robert Brown and the Separatists ... 66
+
+Persecution of the Separatists ... 67
+
+Recantation of Brown; it was reserved for William Brewster to take the
+lead in the Puritan exodus ... 68
+
+James Stuart, and his encounter with Andrew Melville ... 69
+
+What James intended to do when he became King of England ... 70
+
+His view of the political situation, as declared in the conference at
+Hampton Court ... 71
+
+The congregation of Separatists at Scrooby ... 72
+
+The flight to Holland, and settlement at Leyden in 1609 ... 73
+
+Systematic legal toleration in Holland ... 74
+
+Why the Pilgrims did not stay there; they wished to keep up their
+distinct organization and found a state ... 74
+
+And to do this they must cross the ocean, because European territory was
+all preoccupied ... 75
+
+The London and Plymouth companies ... 75
+
+First explorations of the New England coast; Bartholomew Gosnold (1602),
+and George Weymouth (1605) ... 76
+
+The Popham colony (1607) ... 77
+
+Captain John Smith gives to New England its name (1614) ... 78
+
+The Pilgrims at Leyden decide to make a settlement near the Delaware
+river ... 79
+
+How King James regarded the enterprise ... 80
+
+Voyage of the Mayflower; she goes astray and takes the Pilgrims to Cape
+Cod bay ... 81
+
+Founding of the Plymouth colony (1620) ... 82, 83
+
+Why the Indians did not molest the settlers ... 84, 85
+
+The chief interest of this beginning of the Puritan exodus lies not so
+much in what it achieved as in what it suggested ... 86, 87
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE PLANTING OF NEW ENGLAND.
+
+Sir Ferdinando Gorges and the Council for New England ... 88, 89
+
+Wessagusset and Merrymount ... 90, 91
+
+The Dorchester adventurers ... 92
+
+John White wishes to raise a bulwark against the Kingdom of Antichrist
+... 93
+
+And John Endicott undertakes the work of building it ... 94
+
+Conflicting grants sow seeds of trouble; the Gorges and Mason claims ...
+94, 95
+
+Endicott's arrival in New England, and the founding of Salem ... 95
+
+The Company of Massachusetts Bay; Francis Higginson takes a powerful
+reinforcement to Salem ... 96
+
+The development of John White's enterprise into the Company of
+Massachusetts Bay coincided with the first four years of the reign of
+Charles I ... 97
+
+Extraordinary scene in the House of Commons (June 5, 1628) ... 98, 99
+
+The King turns Parliament out of doors (March 2, 1629) ... 100
+
+Desperate nature of the crisis ... 100, 101
+
+The meeting at Cambridge (Aug. 26, 1629), and decision to transfer the
+charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company, and the government established
+under it, to New England ... 102
+
+Leaders of the great migration; John Winthrop ... 102
+
+And Thomas Dudley ... 103
+
+Founding of Massachusetts; the schemes of Gorges overwhelmed ... 104
+
+Beginnings of American constitutional history; the question as to
+self-government raised at Watertown ... 105
+
+Representative system established ... 106
+
+Bicameral assembly; story of the stray pig ... 107
+
+Ecclesiastical polity; the triumph of Separatism ... 108
+
+Restriction of the suffrage to members of the Puritan congregational
+churches ... 109
+
+Founding of Harvard College ... 110
+
+Threefold danger to the New England settlers in 1636:--
+
+  1. From the King, who prepares to attack the charter, but is foiled by
+dissensions at home ... 111-113
+
+  2. From religious dissensions; Roger Williams ... 114-116
+     Henry Vane and Anne Hutchinson ... 116-119
+     Beginnings of New Hampshire and Rhode Island ... 119-120
+
+  3. From the Indians; the Pequot supremacy ... 121
+
+First movements into the Connecticut valley, and disputes with the Dutch
+settlers of New Amsterdam ... 122, 123
+
+Restriction of the suffrage leads to disaffection in Massachusetts;
+profoundly interesting opinions of Winthrop and Hooker ... 123, 124
+
+Connecticut pioneers and their hardships ... 125
+
+Thomas Hooker, and the founding of Connecticut ... 120
+
+The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut (Jan 14, 1639); the first written
+constitution that created a government ... 127
+
+Relations of Connecticut to the genesis of the Federal Union ... 128
+
+Origin of the Pequot War; Sassacus tries to unite the Indian tribes in a
+crusade against the English ... 129, 130
+
+The schemes of Sassacus are foiled by Roger Williams ... 130
+
+The Pequots take the war path alone ... 131
+
+And are exterminated ... 132-134
+
+John Davenport, and the founding of New Haven ... 135
+
+New Haven legislation, and legend of the "Blue Laws" ... 136
+
+With the meeting of the Long Parliament, in 1640, the Puritan exodus
+comes to its end ... 137
+
+What might have been ... 138, 391
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE NEW ENGLAND CONFEDERACY.
+
+The Puritan exodus was purely and exclusively English ... 140
+
+And the settlers were all thrifty and prosperous; chiefly country
+squires and yeomanry of the best and sturdiest type ... 141, 142
+
+In all history there has been no other instance of colonization so
+exclusively effected by picked and chosen men ... 143
+
+What, then, was the principle of selection? The migration was not
+intended to promote what we call religious liberty ... 144, 145
+
+Theocratic ideal of the Puritans ... 146
+
+The impulse which sought to realize itself in the Puritan ideal was an
+ethical impulse ... 147
+
+In interpreting Scripture, the Puritan appealed to his Reason ... 148,
+149
+
+Value of such perpetual theological discussion as was carried on in
+early New England ... 150, 151
+
+Comparison with the history of Scotland ... 152
+
+Bearing of these considerations upon the history of the New England
+confederacy ... 153
+
+The existence of so many colonies (Plymouth, Massachusetts, Connecticut,
+New Haven, Rhode Island, the Piscataqua towns, etc.) was due to
+differences of opinion on questions in which men's religious ideas were
+involved ... 154
+
+And this multiplication of colonies led to a notable and significant
+attempt at confederation ... 155
+
+Turbulence of dissent in Rhode Island ... 156
+
+The Earl of Warwick, and his Board of Commissioners ... 157
+
+Constitution of the Confederacy ... 158
+
+It was only a league, not a federal union ... 159
+
+Its formation involved a tacit assumption of sovereignty ... 160
+
+The fall of Charles I. brought up, for a moment, the question as to the
+supremacy of Parliament over the colonies ... 161
+
+Some interesting questions ... 162
+
+Genesis of the persecuting spirit ... 163
+
+Samuel Gorton and his opinions ... 163-165
+
+He flees to Aquedneck and is banished thence ... 166
+
+Providence protests against him ... 167
+
+He flees to Shawomet, where he buys land of the Indians ... 168
+
+Miantonomo and Uncas ... 169, 170
+
+Death of Miantonomo ... 171
+
+Edward Johnson leads an expedition against Shawomet ... 172
+
+Trial and sentence of the heretics ... 173
+
+Winthrop declares himself in a prophetic opinion ... 174
+
+The Presbyterian cabal ... 175-177
+
+The Cambridge Platform; deaths of Winthrop and Cotton ... 177
+
+Views of Winthrop and Cotton as to toleration in matters of Religion ...
+178
+
+After their death, the leadership in Massachusetts was in the hands of
+Endicott and Norton ... 179
+
+The Quakers; their opinions and behavior ... 179-181
+
+Violent manifestations of dissent ... 182
+
+Anne Austin and Mary Fisher; how they were received in Boston ... 183
+
+The confederated colonies seek to expel the Quakers; noble attitude of
+Rhode Island ... 184
+
+Roger Williams appeals to his friend, Oliver Cromwell ... 185
+
+The "heavenly speech" of Sir Harry Vane ... 185
+
+Laws passed against the Quakers ... 186
+
+How the death penalty was regarded at that time in New England ... 187
+
+Executions of Quakers on Boston Common ... 188, 189
+
+Wenlock Christison's defiance and victory ... 189, 190
+
+The "King's Missive" ... 191
+
+Why Charles II. interfered to protect the Quakers ... 191
+
+His hostile feeling toward the New England governments ... 192
+
+The regicide judges, Goffe and Whalley ... 193, 194
+
+New Haven annexed to Connecticut ... 194, 195
+
+Abraham Pierson, and the founding of Newark ... 196
+
+Breaking-down of the theocratic policy ... 197
+
+Weakening of the Confederacy ... 198
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+KING PHILIP'S WAR.
+
+Relations between the Puritan settlers and the Indians ... 199
+
+Trade with the Indians ... 200
+
+Missionary work; Thomas Mayhew ... 201
+
+John Eliot and his translation of the Bible ... 202
+
+His preaching to the Indians ... 203
+
+His villages of Christian Indians ... 204
+
+The Puritan's intention was to deal gently and honourably with the red
+men ... 205
+
+Why Pennsylvania was so long unmolested by the Indians ... 205, 206
+
+Difficulty of the situation in New England ... 207
+
+It is hard for the savage and the civilized man to understand one
+another ... 208
+
+How Eliot's designs must inevitably have been misinterpreted by the
+Indians ... 209
+
+It is remarkable that peace should have been so long preserved ... 210
+
+Deaths of Massasoit and his son Alexander ... 211
+
+Very little is known about the nature of Philip's designs ... 212
+
+The meeting at Taunton ... 213
+
+Sausamon informs against Philip ... 213
+
+And is murdered ... 214
+
+Massacres at Swanzey and Dartmouth ... 214
+
+Murder of Captain Hutchinson ... 215
+
+Attack on Brookfield, which is relieved by Simon Willard ... 216
+
+Fighting in the Connecticut valley; the mysterious stranger at Hadley
+... 217, 218
+
+Ambuscade at Bloody Brook ... 219
+
+Popular excitement in Boston ... 220
+
+The Narragansetts prepare to take the war-path ... 221
+
+And Governor Winslow leads an army against them ... 222, 223
+
+Storming of the great swamp fortress ... 224
+
+Slaughter of the Indians ... 225
+
+Effect of the blow ... 226
+
+Growth of the humane sentiment in recent times, due to the fact that the
+horrors of war are seldom brought home to everybody's door ... 227, 228
+
+Warfare with savages is likely to be truculent in character ... 229
+
+Attack upon Lancaster ... 230
+
+Mrs. Rowlandson's narrative ... 231-233
+
+Virtual extermination of the Indians (February to August, 1676) ... 233,
+234
+
+Death of Canonchet ... 234
+
+Philip pursued by Captain Church ... 235
+
+Death of Philip ... 236
+
+Indians sold into slavery ... 237
+
+Conduct of the Christian Indians ... 238
+
+War with the Tarratines ... 239
+
+Frightful destruction of life and property ... 240
+
+Henceforth the red man figures no more in the history of New England,
+except in frontier raids under French guidance ... 241
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE TYRANNY OF ANDROS.
+
+Romantic features in the early history of New England ... 242
+
+Captain Edward Johnson, of Woburn, and his book on "The Wonder-working
+Providence of Zion's Saviour in New England" ... 243,244
+
+Acts of the Puritans often judged by an unreal and impossible standard
+... 245
+
+Spirit of the "Wonder-working Providence" ... 246
+
+Merits and faults of the Puritan theocracy ... 247
+
+Restriction of the suffrage to church members ... 248
+
+It was a source of political discontent ... 249
+
+Inquisitorial administration of justice ... 250
+
+The "Half way Covenant" ... 251
+
+Founding of the Old South church ... 252
+
+Unfriendly relations between Charles II and Massachusetts ... 253
+
+Complaints against Massachusetts ... 254
+
+The Lords of Trade ... 255
+
+Arrival of Edward Randolph in Boston ... 256
+
+Joseph Dudley and the beginnings of Toryism in New England ... 257, 258
+
+Charles II. erects the four Piscataqua towns into the royal province of
+New Hampshire ... 259
+
+And quarrels with Massachusetts over the settlement of the Gorges claim
+to the Maine district ... 260
+
+Simon Bradstreet and his verse-making wife ... 261
+
+Massachusetts answers the king's peremptory message ... 262
+
+Secret treaty between Charles II. and Louis XIV ... 263
+
+Shameful proceedings in England ... 264
+
+Massachusetts refuses to surrender her charter; and accordingly it is
+annulled by decree of chancery, June 21, 1684 ... 265
+
+Effect of annulling the charter ... 266
+
+Death of Charles II, accession of James II., and appointment of Sir
+Edmund Andros as viceroy over New England, with despotic powers ... 267
+
+The charter oak ... 268
+
+Episcopal services in Boston ... 268, 269
+
+Founding of the King's Chapel ... 269
+
+The tyranny ... 270
+
+John Wise of Ipswich ... 271
+
+Fall of James II ... 271
+
+Insurrection in Boston, and overthrow of Andros ... 272
+
+Effects of the Revolution of 1689 ... 273
+
+Need for union among all the northern colonies ... 274
+
+Plymouth, Maine, and Acadia annexed to Massachusetts ... 275
+
+Which becomes a royal province ... 276
+
+And is thus brought into political sympathy with Virginia ... 276
+
+The seeds of the American Revolution were already sown, and the spirit
+of 1776 was foreshadowed in 1689 ... 277, 278
+
+
+
+
+THE BEGINNINGS OF NEW ENGLAND.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE ROMAN IDEA AND THE ENGLISH IDEA.
+
+
+It used to be the fashion of historians, looking superficially at the
+facts presented in chronicles and tables of dates, without analyzing and
+comparing vast groups of facts distributed through centuries, or even
+suspecting the need for such analysis and comparison, to assign the date
+476 A.D. as the moment at which the Roman Empire came to an end. It was
+in that year that the soldier of fortune, Odovakar, commander of the
+Herulian mercenaries in Italy, sent the handsome boy Romulus, son of
+Orestes, better known as "little Augustus," from his imperial throne
+to the splendid villa of Lucullus near Naples, and gave him a yearly
+pension of $35,000 [6,000 solidi] to console him for the loss of a
+world. As 324 years elapsed before another emperor was crowned at Rome,
+and as the political headship of Europe after that happy restoration
+remained upon the German soil to which the events of the eighth century
+had shifted it, nothing could seem more natural than the habit which
+historians once had, of saying that the mighty career of Rome had ended,
+as it had begun, with a Romulus. Sometimes the date 476 was even set up
+as a great landmark dividing modern from ancient history. For those,
+however, who took such a view, it was impossible to see the events of
+the Middle Ages in their true relations to what went before and what
+came after. It was impossible to understand what went on in Italy in
+the sixth century, or to explain the position of that great Roman power
+which had its centre on the Bosphorus, which in the code of Justinian
+left us our grandest monument of Roman law, and which for a thousand
+years was the staunch bulwark of Europe against the successive
+aggressions of Persian, Saracen, and Turk. It was equally impossible to
+understand the rise of the Papal power, the all-important politics of
+the great Saxon and Swabian emperors, the relations of mediaeval England
+to the Continental powers, or the marvellously interesting growth of the
+modern European system of nationalities. [Sidenote: When did the Roman
+Empire come to an end?]
+
+Since the middle of the nineteenth century the study of history has
+undergone changes no less sweeping than those which have in the same
+time affected the study of the physical sciences. Vast groups of facts
+distributed through various ages and countries have been subjected to
+comparison and analysis, with the result that they have not only thrown
+fresh light upon one another, but have in many cases enabled us to
+recover historic points of view that had long been buried in oblivion.
+Such an instance was furnished about twenty-five years ago by Dr.
+Bryce's epoch-making work on the Holy Roman Empire. Since then
+historians still recognize the importance of the date 476 as that which
+left the Bishop of Rome the dominant personage in Italy, and marked the
+shifting of the political centre of gravity from the Palatine to the
+Lateran. This was one of those subtle changes which escape notice until
+after some of their effects have attracted attention. The most important
+effect, in this instance, realized after three centuries, was not the
+overthrow of Roman power in the West, but its indefinite extension and
+expansion. The men of 476 not only had no idea that they were entering
+upon a new era, but least of all did they dream that the Roman Empire
+had come to an end, or was ever likely to. Its cities might be pillaged,
+its provinces overrun, but the supreme imperial power itself was
+something without which the men of those days could not imagine the
+world as existing. It must have its divinely ordained representative in
+one place if not in another. If the throne in Italy was vacant, it
+was no more than had happened before; there was still a throne at
+Constantinople, and to its occupant Zeno the Roman Senate sent a
+message, saying that one emperor was enough for both ends of the earth,
+and begging him to confer upon the gallant Odovakar the title of
+patrician, and entrust the affairs of Italy to his care. So when
+Sicambrian Chlodwig set up his Merovingian kingdom in northern Gaul, he
+was glad to array himself in the robe of a Roman consul, and obtain from
+the eastern emperor a formal ratification of his rule.
+
+[Transcriber's note: page missing in original.] still survives in
+political methods and habits of thought that will yet be long in dying
+out. With great political systems, as with typical forms of organic
+life, the processes of development and of extinction are exceedingly
+slow, and it is seldom that the stages can be sharply marked by dates.
+The processes which have gradually shifted the seat of empire until the
+prominent part played nineteen centuries ago by Rome and Alexandria,
+on opposite sides of the Mediterranean, has been at length assumed by
+London and New York, on opposite sides of the Atlantic, form a most
+interesting subject of study. But to understand them, one must do much
+more than merely catalogue the facts of political history; one must
+acquire a knowledge of the drifts and tendencies of human thought and
+feeling and action from the earliest ages to the times in which we
+live. In covering so wide a field we cannot of course expect to obtain
+anything like complete results. In order to make a statement simple
+enough to be generally intelligible, it is necessary to pass over many
+circumstances and many considerations that might in one way and another
+qualify what we have to say. Nevertheless it is quite possible for us to
+discern, in their bold general outlines, some historic truths of supreme
+importance. In contemplating the salient features of the change which
+has now for a long time been making the world more English and less
+Roman, we shall find not only intellectual pleasure and profit but
+practical guidance. For in order to understand this slow but mighty
+change, we must look a little into that process of nation-making which
+has been going on since prehistoric ages and is going on here among us
+to-day, and from the recorded experience of men in times long past
+we may gather lessons of infinite value for ourselves and for our
+children's children. As in all the achievements of mankind it is only
+after much weary experiment and many a heart-sickening failure that
+success is attained, so has it been especially with nation-making. Skill
+in the political art is the fruit of ages of intellectual and moral
+discipline; and just as picture-writing had to come before printing and
+canoes before steamboats, so the cruder political methods had to be
+tried and found wanting, amid the tears and groans of unnumbered
+generations, before methods less crude could be put into operation. In
+the historic survey upon which we are now to enter, we shall see that
+the Roman Empire represented a crude method of nation-making which began
+with a masterful career of triumph over earlier and cruder methods, but
+has now for several centuries been giving way before a more potent and
+satisfactory method. And just as the merest glance at the history of
+Europe shows us Germanic peoples wresting the supremacy from Rome, so in
+this deeper study we shall discover a grand and far-reaching Teutonic
+Idea of political life overthrowing and supplanting the Roman Idea. Our
+attention will be drawn toward England as the battle-ground and the
+seventeenth century as the critical moment of the struggle; we shall see
+in Puritanism the tremendous militant force that determined the issue;
+and when our perspective has thus become properly adjusted, we shall
+begin to realize for the first time how truly wonderful was the age that
+witnessed the Beginnings of New England. We have long had before our
+minds the colossal figure of Roman Julius as "the foremost man of all
+this world," but as the seventeenth century recedes into the past
+the figure of English Oliver begins to loom up as perhaps even more
+colossal. In order to see these world-events in their true perspective,
+and to make perfectly clear the manner in which we are to estimate them,
+we must go a long distance away from them. We must even go back, as
+nearly as may be, to the beginning of things. [Sidenote: Gradual
+shifting of primacy from the men who spoke Latin, and their descendants,
+to the men who speak English]
+
+If we look back for a moment to the primitive stages of society, we may
+picture to ourselves the surface of the earth sparsely and scantily
+covered with wandering tribes of savages, rude in morals and manners,
+narrow and monotonous in experience, sustaining life very much as lower
+animals sustain it, by gathering wild fruits or slaying wild game, and
+waging chronic warfare alike with powerful beasts and with rival tribes
+of men. [Sidenote: Political history is the history of nation-making]
+
+In the widest sense the subject of political history is the description
+of the processes by which, under favourable circumstances, innumerable
+such primitive tribes have become welded together into mighty nations,
+with elevated standards of morals and manners, with wide and varied
+experience, sustaining life and ministering to human happiness by
+elaborate arts and sciences, and putting a curb upon warfare by limiting
+its scope, diminishing its cruelty, and interrupting it by intervals of
+peace. The story, as laid before us in the records of three thousand
+years, is fascinating and absorbing in its human interest for those who
+content themselves with the study of its countless personal incidents,
+and neglect its profound philosophical lessons. But for those who study
+it in the scientific spirit, the human interest of its details becomes
+still more intensely fascinating and absorbing. Battles and coronations,
+poems and inventions, migrations and martyrdoms, acquire new meanings
+and awaken new emotions as we begin to discern their bearings upon the
+solemn work of ages that is slowly winning for humanity a richer and
+more perfect life. By such meditation upon men's thoughts and deeds is
+the understanding purified, till we become better able to comprehend our
+relations to the world and the duty that lies upon each of us to shape
+his conduct rightly.
+
+In the welding together of primitive shifting tribes into stable and
+powerful nations, we can seem to discern three different methods that
+have been followed at different times and places, with widely different
+results. In all cases the fusion has been effected by war, but it has
+gone on in three broadly contrasted ways. The first of these methods,
+which has been followed from time immemorial in the Oriental world, may
+be roughly described as _conquest without incorporation._ A tribe grows
+to national dimensions by conquering and annexing its neighbours,
+without admitting them to a share in its political life. Probably there
+is always at first some incorporation, or even perhaps some crude germ
+of federative alliance; but this goes very little way,--only far enough
+to fuse together a few closely related tribes, agreeing in speech and
+habits, into a single great tribe that can overwhelm its neighbours. In
+early society this sort of incorporation cannot go far without being
+stopped by some impassable barrier of language or religion. After
+reaching that point, the conquering tribe simply annexes its neighbours
+and makes them its slaves. It becomes a superior caste, ruling over
+vanquished peoples, whom it oppresses with frightful cruelty, while
+living on the fruits of their toil in what has been aptly termed
+Oriental luxury. Such has been the origin of many eastern despotisms, in
+the valleys of the Nile and Euphrates, and elsewhere. Such a political
+structure admits of a very considerable development of material
+civilization, in which gorgeous palaces and artistic temples may be
+built, and perhaps even literature and scholarship rewarded, with money
+wrung from millions of toiling wretches. There is that sort of brutal
+strength in it, that it may endure for many long ages, until it comes
+into collision with some higher civilization. Then it is likely to end
+in sudden collapse, because the fighting quality of the people has
+been destroyed. Populations that have lived for centuries in fear of
+impalement or crucifixion, and have known no other destination for
+the products of their labour than the clutches of the omnipresent
+tax-gatherer, are not likely to furnish good soldiers. A handful of
+freemen will scatter them like sheep, as the Greeks did twenty-three
+centuries ago at Kynaxa, as the English did the other day at Tel
+el-Kebir. On the other hand, where the manliness of the vanquished
+people is not crushed, the sway of the conquerors who cannot enter into
+political union with them is likely to be cast off, as in the case of
+the Moors in Spain. There was a civilization in many respects admirable.
+It was eminent for industry, science, art, and poetry; its annals are
+full of romantic interest; it was in some respects superior to the
+Christian system which supplanted it; in many ways it contributed
+largely to the progress of the human race; and it was free from some
+of the worst vices of Oriental civilizations. Yet because of the
+fundamental defect that between the Christian Spaniard and his
+Mussulman conqueror there could be no political fusion, this brilliant
+civilization was doomed. During eight centuries of more or less
+extensive rule in the Spanish peninsula, the Moor was from first to last
+an alien, just as after four centuries the Turk is still an alien in
+the Balkan peninsula. The natural result was a struggle that lasted
+age after age till it ended in the utter extermination of one of the
+parties, and left behind it a legacy of hatred and persecution that has
+made the history of modern Spain a dismal record of shame and disaster.
+[Sidenote: The Oriental method of nation-making]
+
+In this first method of nation-making, then, which we may call the
+Oriental method, one now sees but little to commend. It was better than
+savagery, and for a long time no more efficient method was possible,
+but the leading peoples of the world have long since outgrown it; and
+although the resulting form of political government is the oldest we
+know and is not yet extinct, it nevertheless has not the elements
+of permanence. Sooner or later it will disappear, as savagery is
+disappearing, as the rudest types of inchoate human society have
+disappeared.
+
+The second method by which nations have been made may be called
+the Roman method; and we may briefly describe it as _conquest with
+incorporation, but without representation_. The secret of Rome's
+wonderful strength lay in the fact that she incorporated the vanquished
+peoples into her own body politic. In the early time there was a fusion
+of tribes going on in Latium, which, if it had gone no further, would
+have been similar to the early fusion of Ionic tribes in Attika or of
+Iranian tribes in Media. But whereas everywhere else this political
+fusion soon stopped, in the Roman world it went on. One after another
+Italian tribes and Italian towns were not merely overcome but admitted
+to a share in the political rights and privileges of the victors. By the
+time this had gone on until the whole Italian peninsula was consolidated
+under the headship of Rome, the result was a power incomparably greater
+than any other that the world had yet seen. Never before had so many
+people been brought under one government without making slaves of most
+of them. Liberty had existed before, whether in barbaric tribes or
+in Greek cities. Union had existed before, in Assyrian or Persian
+despotisms. Now liberty and union were for the first time joined
+together, with consequences enduring and stupendous. The whole
+Mediterranean world was brought under one government; ancient barriers
+of religion, speech, and custom were overthrown in every direction; and
+innumerable barbarian tribes, from the Alps to the wilds of northern
+Britain, from the Bay of Biscay to the Carpathian mountains, were more
+or less completely transformed into Roman citizens, protected by Roman
+law, and sharing in the material and spiritual benefits of Roman
+civilization. Gradually the whole vast structure became permeated by
+Hellenic and Jewish thought, and thus were laid the lasting foundations
+of modern society, of a common Christendom, furnished with a common
+stock of ideas concerning man's relation to God and the world, and
+acknowledging a common standard of right and wrong. This was a
+prodigious work, which raised human life to a much higher plane than
+that which it had formerly occupied, and endless gratitude is due to the
+thousands of steadfast men who in one way or another devoted their lives
+to its accomplishment. [Sidenote: The Roman method of nation-making]
+
+This Roman method of nation-making had nevertheless its fatal
+shortcomings, and it was only very slowly, moreover, that it wrought
+out its own best results. It was but gradually that the rights and
+privileges of Roman citizenship were extended over the whole Roman
+world, and in the mean time there were numerous instances where
+conquered provinces seemed destined to no better fate than had awaited
+the victims of Egyptian or Assyrian conquest. The rapacity and cruelty
+of Caius Verres could hardly have been outdone by the worst of Persian
+satraps; but there was a difference. A moral sense and political sense
+had been awakened which could see both the wickedness and the folly of
+such conduct. The voice of a Cicero sounded with trumpet tones against
+the oppressor, who was brought to trial and exiled for deeds which under
+the Oriental system, from the days of Artaxerxes to those of the Grand
+Turk, would scarcely have called forth a reproving word. It was by slow
+degrees that the Roman came to understand the virtues of his own method,
+and learned to apply it consistently until the people of all parts of
+the empire were, in theory at least, equal before the law. In theory, I
+say, for in point of fact there was enough of viciousness in the Roman
+system to prevent it from achieving permanent success. Historians have
+been fond of showing how the vitality of the whole system was impaired
+by wholesale slave-labour, by the false political economy which taxes
+all for the benefit of a few, by the debauching view of civil office
+which regards it as private perquisite and not as public trust,
+and--worst of all, perhaps--by the communistic practice of feeding an
+idle proletariat out of the imperial treasury. The names of these deadly
+social evils are not unfamiliar to American ears. Even of the last we
+have heard ominous whispers in the shape of bills to promote mendicancy
+under the specious guise of fostering education or rewarding military
+services. And is it not a striking illustration of the slowness with
+which mankind learns the plainest rudiments of wisdom and of justice,
+that only in the full light of the nineteenth century, and at the cost
+of a terrible war, should the most intelligent people on earth have got
+rid of a system of labour devised in the crudest ages of antiquity and
+fraught with misery to the employed, degradation to the employers, and
+loss to everybody? [Sidenote: Its slow development]
+
+These evils, we see, in one shape or another, have existed almost
+everywhere; and the vice of the Roman system did not consist in the fact
+that under it they were fully developed, but in the fact that it had no
+adequate means of overcoming them. Unless helped by something supplied
+from outside the Roman world, civilization must have succumbed to these
+evils, the progress of mankind must have been stopped. What was needed
+was the introduction of a fierce spirit of personal liberty and local
+self-government. The essential vice of the Roman system was that it had
+been unable to avoid weakening the spirit of personal independence and
+crushing out local self-government among the peoples to whom it had been
+applied. It owed its wonderful success to joining Liberty with Union,
+but as it went on it found itself compelled gradually to sacrifice
+Liberty to Union, strengthening the hands of the central government and
+enlarging its functions more and more, until by and by the political
+life of the several parts had so far died away that, under the pressure
+of attack from without, the Union fell to pieces and the whole political
+system had to be slowly and painfully reconstructed.
+
+Now if we ask why the Roman government found itself thus obliged to
+sacrifice personal liberty and local independence to the paramount
+necessity of holding the empire together, the answer will point us to
+the essential and fundamental vice of the Roman method of nation-making.
+It lacked the principle of representation. The old Roman world knew
+nothing of representative assemblies. [Sidenote: It knew nothing of
+representation]
+
+Its senates were assemblies of notables, constituting in the main an
+aristocracy of men who had held high office; its popular assemblies were
+primary assemblies,--town-meetings. There was no notion of such a thing
+as political power delegated by the people to representatives who were
+to wield it away from home and out of sight of their constituents. The
+Roman's only notion of delegated power was that of authority delegated
+by the government to its generals and prefects who discharged at a
+distance its military and civil functions. When, therefore, the Roman
+popular government, originally adapted to a single city, had come
+to extend itself over a large part of the world, it lacked the one
+institution by means of which government could be carried on over
+so vast an area without degenerating into despotism. [Sidenote: And
+therefore ended in despotism]
+
+Even could the device of representation have occurred to the mind of
+some statesman trained in Roman methods, it would probably have made no
+difference. Nobody would have known how to use it. You cannot invent
+an institution as you would invent a plough. Such a notion as that of
+representative government must needs start from small beginnings and
+grow in men's minds until it should become part and parcel of their
+mental habits. For the want of it the home government at Rome became
+more and more unmanageable until it fell into the hands of the army,
+while at the same time the administration of the empire became more and
+more centralized; the people of its various provinces, even while their
+social condition was in some respects improved, had less and less
+voice in the management of their local affairs, and thus the spirit of
+personal independence was gradually weakened. This centralization was
+greatly intensified by the perpetual danger of invasion on the northern
+and eastern frontiers, all the way from the Rhine to the Euphrates.
+Do what it would, the government must become more and more a military
+despotism, must revert toward the Oriental type. The period extending
+from the third century before Christ to the third century after was a
+period of extraordinary intellectual expansion and moral awakening; but
+when we observe the governmental changes introduced under the emperor
+Diocletian at the very end of this period, we realize how serious had
+been the political retrogression, how grave the danger that the stream
+of human life might come to stagnate in Europe, as it had long since
+stagnated in Asia.
+
+Two mighty agents, cooperating in their opposite ways to prevent any
+such disaster, were already entering upon the scene. The first was the
+colonization of the empire by Germanic tribes already far advanced
+beyond savagery, already somewhat tinctured with Roman civilization, yet
+at the same time endowed with an intense spirit of personal and local
+independence. With this wholesome spirit they were about to refresh and
+revivify the empire, but at the risk of undoing its work of political
+organization and reducing it to barbarism. The second was the
+establishment of the Roman church, an institution capable of holding
+European society together in spite of a political disintegration that
+was widespread and long-continued. While wave after wave of Germanic
+colonization poured over romanized Europe, breaking down old
+boundary-lines and working sudden and astonishing changes on the map,
+setting up in every quarter baronies, dukedoms, and kingdoms fermenting
+with vigorous political life; while for twenty generations this salutary
+but wild and dangerous work was going on, there was never a moment when
+the imperial sway of Rome was quite set aside and forgotten, there was
+never a time when union of some sort was not maintained through the
+dominion which the church had established over the European mind. When
+we duly consider this great fact in its relations to what went before
+and what came after, it is hard to find words fit to express the debt of
+gratitude which modern civilization owes to the Roman Catholic church.
+When we think of all the work, big with promise of the future, that went
+on in those centuries which modern writers in their ignorance used once
+to set apart and stigmatize as the "Dark Ages"; when we consider how the
+seeds of what is noblest in modern life were then painfully sown upon
+the soil which imperial Rome had prepared; when we think of the various
+work of a Gregory, a Benedict, a Boniface, an Alfred, a Charlemagne; we
+feel that there is a sense in which the most brilliant achievements
+of pagan antiquity are dwarfed in comparison with these. Until quite
+lately, indeed, the student of history has had his attention too
+narrowly confined to the ages that have been preeminent for literature
+and art--the so-called classical ages--and thus his sense of historical
+perspective has been impaired. When Mr. Freeman uses Gregory of Tours as
+a text-book, he shows that he realizes how an epoch may be none the less
+portentous though it has not had a Tacitus to describe it, and certainly
+no part of history is more full of human interest than the troubled
+period in which the powerful streams of Teutonic life pouring into Roman
+Europe were curbed in their destructiveness and guided to noble ends by
+the Catholic church. Out of the interaction between these two mighty
+agents has come the political system of the modern world. The moment
+when this interaction might have seemed on the point of reaching a
+complete and harmonious result was the glorious thirteenth century, the
+culminating moment of the Holy Roman Empire. Then, as in the times of
+Caesar or Trajan, there might have seemed to be a union among civilized
+men, in which the separate life of individuals and localities was not
+submerged. In that golden age alike of feudal system, of empire, and of
+church, there were to be seen the greatest monarchs, in fullest sympathy
+with their peoples, that Christendom has known,--an Edward I., a St.
+Louis, a Frederick II. Then when in the pontificates of Innocent III.
+and his successors the Roman church reached its apogee, the religious
+yearnings of men sought expression in the sublimest architecture the
+world has seen. Then Aquinas summed up in his profound speculations the
+substance of Catholic theology, and while the morning twilight of modern
+science might be discerned in the treatises of Roger Bacon, while
+wandering minstrelsy revealed the treasures of modern speech, soon to
+be wrought under the hands of Dante and Chaucer into forms of exquisite
+beauty, the sacred fervour of the apostolic ages found itself renewed in
+the tender and mystic piety of St. Francis of Assisi. It was a wonderful
+time, but after all less memorable as the culmination of mediaeval
+empire and mediaeval church than as the dawning of the new era in which
+we live to-day, and in which the development of human society proceeds
+in accordance with more potent methods than those devised by the genius
+of pagan or Christian Rome. [Sidenote: The German invaders and the Roman
+church] [Sidenote: The wonderful thirteenth century]
+
+For the origin of these more potent methods we must look back to the
+early ages of the Teutonic people; for their development and application
+on a grand scale we must look chiefly to the history of that most
+Teutonic of peoples in its institutions, though perhaps not more than
+half-Teutonic in blood, the English, with their descendants in the New
+World. The third method of nation-making may be called the Teutonic or
+preeminently the English method. It differs from the Oriental and Roman
+methods which we have been considering in a feature of most profound
+significance; it contains the principle of representation. For this
+reason, though like all nation-making it was in its early stages
+attended with war and conquest, it nevertheless does not necessarily
+require war and conquest in order to be put into operation. Of the other
+two methods war was an essential part. In the typical Oriental nation,
+such as Assyria or Persia, we see a conquering tribe holding down a
+number of vanquished peoples, and treating them like slaves: here the
+nation is very imperfectly made, and its government is subject to sudden
+and violent changes. In the Roman empire we see a conquering people hold
+sway over a number of vanquished peoples, but instead of treating them
+like slaves, it gradually makes them its equals before the law; here
+the resulting political body is much more nearly a nation, and its
+government is much more stable. A Lydian of the fifth century before
+Christ felt no sense of allegiance to the Persian master who simply
+robbed and abused him; but the Gaul of the fifth century after Christ
+was proud of the name of Roman and ready to fight for the empire of
+which he was a citizen. We have seen, nevertheless, that for want of
+representation the Roman method failed when applied to an immense
+territory, and the government tended to become more and more despotic,
+to revert toward the Oriental type. Now of the English or Teutonic
+method, I say, war is not an essential part; for where representative
+government is once established, it is possible for a great nation to be
+formed by the peaceful coalescence of neighbouring states, or by their
+union into a federal body. An instance of the former was the coalescence
+of England and Scotland effected early in the eighteenth century
+after ages of mutual hostility; for instances of the latter we have
+Switzerland and the United States. Now federalism, though its rise
+and establishment may be incidentally accompanied by warfare, is
+nevertheless in spirit pacific. Conquest in the Oriental sense is quite
+incompatible with it; conquest in the Roman sense is hardly less so. At
+the close of our Civil War there were now and then zealous people to
+be found who thought that the southern states ought to be treated as
+conquered territory, governed by prefects sent from Washington, and held
+down by military force for a generation or so. Let us hope that there
+are few to-day who can fail to see that such a course would have been
+fraught with almost as much danger as the secession movement itself.
+At least it would have been a hasty confession, quite uncalled for
+and quite untrue, that American federalism had thus far proved itself
+incompetent,--that we had indeed preserved our national unity, but only
+at the frightful cost of sinking to a lower plane of national life.
+[Sidenote: The English method of nation-making] [Sidenote: Pacific
+tendencies of federalism]
+
+But federalism, with its pacific implications, was not an invention of
+the Teutonic mind. The idea was familiar to the city communities of
+ancient Greece, which, along with their intense love of self-government,
+felt the need of combined action for warding off external attack. In
+their Achaian and Aitolian leagues the Greeks made brilliant attempts
+toward founding a nation upon some higher principle than that of mere
+conquest, and the history of these attempts is exceedingly
+interesting and instructive. They failed for lack of the principle
+of representation, which was practically unknown to the world until
+introduced by the Teutonic colonizers of the Roman empire. Until the
+idea of power delegated by the people had become familiar to men's minds
+in its practical bearings, it was impossible to create a great nation
+without crushing out the political life in some of its parts. Some
+centre of power was sure to absorb all the political life, and grow at
+the expense of the outlying parts, until the result was a centralized
+despotism. Hence it came to be one of the commonplace assumptions of
+political writers that republics must be small, that free government
+is practicable only in a confined area, and that the only strong and
+durable government, capable of maintaining order throughout a vast
+territory, is some form of absolute monarchy. [Sidenote: Fallacy of the
+notion that republics must be small]
+
+It was quite natural that people should formerly have held this opinion,
+and it is indeed not yet quite obsolete, but its fallaciousness will
+become more and more apparent as American history is better understood.
+Our experience has now so far widened that we can see that despotism
+is not the strongest but wellnigh the weakest form of government; that
+centralized administrations, like that of the Roman empire, have fallen
+to pieces, not because of too much but because of too little freedom;
+and that the only perdurable government must be that which succeeds in
+achieving national unity on a grand scale, without weakening the sense
+of personal and local independence. For in the body politic this spirit
+of freedom is as the red corpuscles in the blood; it carries the life
+with it. It makes the difference between a society of self-respecting
+men and women and a society of puppets.
+
+Your nation may have art, poetry, and science, all the refinements of
+civilized life, all the comforts and safeguards that human ingenuity can
+devise; but if it lose this spirit of personal and local independence,
+it is doomed and deserves its doom. As President Cleveland has well
+said, it is not the business of a government to support its people, but
+of the people to support their government; and once to lose sight
+of this vital truth is as dangerous as to trifle with some stealthy
+narcotic poison. Of the two opposite perils which have perpetually
+threatened the welfare of political society--anarchy on the one hand,
+loss of self-government on the other--Jefferson was right in maintaining
+that the latter is really the more to be dreaded because its beginnings
+are so terribly insidious. Many will understand what is meant by a
+threat of secession, where few take heed of the baneful principle
+involved in a Texas Seed-bill.
+
+That the American people are still fairly alive to the importance of
+these considerations, is due to the weary ages of struggle in which our
+forefathers have manfully contended for the right of self-government.
+From the days of Arminius and Civilis in the wilds of lower Germany to
+the days of Franklin and Jefferson in Independence Hall, we have been
+engaged in this struggle, not without some toughening of our political
+fibre, not without some refining of our moral sense. Not among our
+English forefathers only, but among all the peoples of mediaeval and
+modern Europe has the struggle gone on, with various and instructive
+results. In all parts of romanized Europe invaded and colonized by
+Teutonic tribes, self-government attempted to spring up. What may have
+been the origin of the idea of representation we do not know; like most
+origins, it seems lost in the prehistoric darkness. Wherever we find
+Teutonic tribes settling down over a wide area, we find them holding
+their primary assemblies, usually their annual March-meetings, like
+those in which Mr. Hosea Biglow and others like him have figured.
+Everywhere, too, we find some attempt at representative assemblies,
+based on the principle of the three estates, clergy, nobles, and
+commons. But nowhere save in England does the representative principle
+become firmly established, at first in county-meetings, afterward in a
+national parliament limiting the powers of the national monarch as the
+primary tribal assembly had limited the powers of the tribal chief. It
+is for this reason that we must call the method of nation-making by
+means of a representative assembly the English method. While the idea of
+representation was perhaps the common property of the Teutonic tribes,
+it was only in England that it was successfully put into practice and
+became the dominant political idea. We may therefore agree with Dr.
+Stubbs that in its political development England is the most Teutonic of
+all European countries,--the country which in becoming a great nation
+has most fully preserved the local independence so characteristic of the
+ancient Germans. The reasons for this are complicated, and to try to
+assign them all would needlessly encumber our exposition. But there is
+one that is apparent and extremely instructive. There is sometimes a
+great advantage in being able to plant political institutions in a
+virgin soil, where they run no risk of being modified or perhaps
+metamorphosed through contact with rival institutions. In America the
+Teutonic idea has been worked out even more completely than in Britain;
+and so far as institutions are concerned, our English forefathers
+settled here as in an empty country. They were not obliged to modify
+their political ideas so as to bring them into harmony with those of the
+Indians; the disparity in civilization was so great that the Indians
+were simply thrust aside, along with the wolves and buffaloes.
+[Sidenote: Teutonic March-meetings and representative assemblies]
+
+This illustration will help us to understand the peculiar features of
+the Teutonic settlement of Britain. Whether the English invaders really
+slew all the romanized Kelts who dwelt in the island, except those who
+found refuge in the mountains of Cumberland, Wales, and Cornwall, or
+fled across the channel to Brittany, we need not seek to decide. It
+is enough to point out one respect in which the Teutonic conquest was
+immeasurably more complete in Britain than in any other part of the
+empire. Everywhere else the tribes who settled upon Roman soil--the
+Goths, Vandals, Suevi, and Burgundians--were christianized, and so to
+some extent romanized, before they came to take possession. Even the
+more distant Franks had been converted to Christianity before they
+had completed their conquest of Gaul. Everywhere except in Britain,
+therefore, the conquerors had already imbibed Roman ideas, and the
+authority of Rome was in a certain sense acknowledged. There was no
+break in the continuity of political events. In Britain, on the other
+hand, there was a complete break, so that while on the continent the
+fifth and sixth centuries are seen in the full midday light of history,
+in Britain they have lapsed into the twilight of half-legendary
+tradition. The Saxon and English tribes, coming from the remote wilds
+of northern Germany, whither Roman missionaries had not yet penetrated,
+still worshipped Thor and Wodan; and their conquest of Britain was
+effected with such deadly thoroughness that Christianity was destroyed
+there, or lingered only in sequestered nooks. A land once christianized
+thus actually fell back into paganism, so that the work of converting it
+to Christianity had to be done over again. From the landing of heathen
+Hengest on the isle of Thanet to the landing of Augustine and his monks
+on the same spot, one hundred and forty-eight years elapsed, during
+which English institutions found time to take deep root in British
+soil with scarcely more interference, as to essential points, than in
+American soil twelve centuries afterward. [Sidenote: Peculiarity of the
+Teutonic conquest of Britain]
+
+The century and a half between 449 and 597 is therefore one of the most
+important epochs in the history of the people that speak the English
+language. Before settling in Britain our forefathers had been tribes in
+the upper stages of barbarism; now they began the process of coalescence
+into a nation in which the principle of self-government should be
+retained and developed. The township and its town-meeting we find there,
+as later in New England. The county-meeting we also find, while the
+county is a little state in itself and not a mere administrative
+district. And in this county-meeting we may observe a singular feature,
+something never seen before in the world, something destined to work
+out vaster political results than Caesar ever dreamed of. This
+county-meeting is not a primary assembly; all the freemen from all the
+townships cannot leave their homes and their daily business to attend
+it. Nor is it merely an assembly of notables, attended by the most
+important men of the neighbourhood. It is a representative assembly,
+attended by select men from each township. We may see in it the germ of
+the British parliament and of the American congress, as indeed of all
+modern legislative bodies, for it is a most suggestive commentary upon
+what we are saying that in all other countries which have legislatures,
+they have been copied, within quite recent times, from English or
+American models. We can seldom if ever fix a date for the beginning
+of anything, and we can by no means fix a date for the beginning of
+representative assemblies in England. We can only say that where
+we first find traces of county organization, we find traces of
+representation. Clearly, if the English conquerors of Britain had left
+the framework of Roman institutions standing there, as it remained
+standing in Gaul, there would have been great danger of this principle
+of representation not surviving. It would most likely have been crushed
+in its callow infancy. The conquerors would insensibly have fallen into
+the Roman way of doing things, as they did in Gaul. [Sidenote: Survival
+and development of Teutonic representative assembly in England]
+
+
+From the start, then, we find the English nationality growing up under
+very different conditions from those which obtained in other parts
+of Europe. So far as institutions are concerned, Teutonism was less
+modified in England than in the German fatherland itself, For the
+gradual conquest and Christianization of Germany which began with
+Charles the Great, and went on until in the thirteenth century the
+frontier had advanced eastward to the Vistula, entailed to a certain
+extent the romanization of Germany. For a thousand years after Charles
+the Great, the political head of Germany was also the political head
+of the Holy Roman Empire, and the civil and criminal code by which the
+daily life of the modern German citizen is regulated is based upon the
+jurisprudence of Rome. Nothing, perhaps, could illustrate more forcibly
+than this sheer contrast the peculiarly Teutonic character of English
+civilization. Between the eighth and the eleventh centuries, when the
+formation of English nationality was approaching completion, it received
+a fresh and powerful infusion of Teutonism in the swarms of heathen
+Northmen or Danes who occupied the eastern coasts, struggled long for
+the supremacy, and gradually becoming christianized, for a moment
+succeeded in seizing the crown. Of the invasion of partially romanized
+Northmen from Normandy which followed soon after, and which has so
+profoundly affected English society and English speech, we need notice
+here but two conspicuous features. First, it increased the power of the
+crown and the clergy, brought all England more than ever under one law,
+and strengthened the feeling of nationality. It thus made England a
+formidable military power, while at the same time it brought her into
+closer relations with continental Europe than she had held since the
+fourth century. Secondly, by superposing a new feudal nobility as the
+upper stratum of society, it transformed the Old-English thanehood into
+the finest middle-class of rural gentry and yeomanry that has ever
+existed in any country; a point of especial interest to Americans, since
+it was in this stratum of society that the two most powerful streams of
+English migration to America--the Virginia stream and the New
+England stream--alike had their source. [Sidenote: Primitive Teutonic
+institutions less modified in England than in Germany]
+
+By the thirteenth century the increasing power and pretensions of the
+crown, as the unification of English nationality went on, brought about
+a result unlike anything known on the continent of Europe; it brought
+about a resistless coalition between the great nobles, the rural gentry
+and yeomanry, and the burghers of the towns, for the purpose of curbing
+royalty, arresting the progress of centralization, and setting up
+representative government on a truly national scale. This grand result
+was partly due to peculiar circumstances which had their origin in
+the Norman conquest; but it was largely due to the political habits
+generated by long experience of local representative assemblies,--habits
+which made it comparatively easy for different classes of society to
+find their voice and use it for the attainment of ends in common. On the
+continent of Europe the encroaching sovereign had to contend with
+here and there an arrogant vassal, here and there a high-spirited and
+rebellious town; in England, in this first great crisis of popular
+government, he found himself confronted by a united people. The fruits
+of the grand combination were _first_, the wresting of Magna Charta from
+King John in 1215, and _secondly_, the meeting of the first House of
+Commons in 1265. Four years of civil war were required to secure these
+noble results. The Barons' War, of the years 1263 to 1267, was an
+event of the same order of importance as the Great Rebellion of the
+seventeenth century and the American Revolution; and among the
+founders of that political freedom which is enjoyed to-day by all
+English-speaking people, the name of Simon de Montfort, Earl of
+Leicester, deserves a place in our grateful remembrance beside the names
+of Cromwell and Washington. Simon's great victory at Lewes in 1264 must
+rank with Naseby and Yorktown. The work begun by his House of Commons
+was the same work that has continued to go on without essential
+interruption down to the days of Cleveland and Gladstone. The
+fundamental principle of political freedom is "no taxation without
+representation"; you must not take a farthing of my money without
+consulting my wishes as to the use that shall be made of it. Only
+when this principle of justice was first practically recognized, did
+government begin to divorce itself from the primitive bestial barbaric
+system of tyranny and plunder, and to ally itself with the forces that
+in the fulness of time are to bring peace on earth and good will to
+men. Of all dates in history, therefore, there is none more fit to be
+commemorated than 1265; for in that year there was first asserted and
+applied at Westminster, on a national scale, that fundamental principle
+of "no taxation without representation," that innermost kernel of the
+English Idea, which the Stamp Act Congress defended at New York exactly
+five hundred years afterward. When we think of these dates, by the way,
+we realize the import of the saying that in the sight of the Lord a
+thousand years are but as a day, and we feel that the work of the Lord
+cannot be done by the listless or the slothful. So much time and so much
+strife by sea and land has it taken to secure beyond peradventure the
+boon to mankind for which Earl Simon gave up his noble life on the field
+of Evesham! Nor without unremitting watchfulness can we be sure that the
+day of peril is yet past. From kings, indeed, we have no more to fear;
+they have come to be as spooks and bogies of the nursery. But the
+gravest dangers are those which present themselves in new forms, against
+which people's minds have not yet been fortified with traditional
+sentiments and phrases. The inherited predatory tendency of men to seize
+upon the fruits of other people's labour is still very strong, and while
+we have nothing more to fear from kings, we may yet have trouble enough
+from commercial monopolies and favoured industries, marching to the
+polls their hordes of bribed retainers. Well indeed has it been said
+that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. God never meant that in
+this fair but treacherous world in which He has placed us we should earn
+our salvation without steadfast labour. [Eternal vigilance is the price
+of liberty]
+
+To return to Earl Simon, we see that it was just in that wonderful
+thirteenth century, when the Roman idea of government might seem to
+have been attaining its richest and most fruitful development, that the
+richer and more fruitful English idea first became incarnate in the
+political constitution of a great and rapidly growing nation. It was not
+long before the struggle between the Roman Idea and the English Idea,
+clothed in various forms, became the dominating issue in European
+history. We have now to observe the rise of modern nationalities, as new
+centres of political life, out of the various provinces of the Roman
+world. In the course of this development the Teutonic representative
+assembly is at first everywhere discernible, in some form or other,
+as in the Spanish Cortes or the States-General of France, but on the
+continent it generally dies out. Only in such nooks as Switzerland and
+the Netherlands does it survive. In the great nations it succumbs before
+the encroachments of the crown. The comparatively novel Teutonic idea of
+power delegated by the people to their representatives had not become
+deeply enough rooted in the political soil of the continent; and
+accordingly we find it more and more disused and at length almost
+forgotten, while the old and deeply rooted Roman idea of power delegated
+by the governing body to its lieutenants and prefects usurps its place.
+Let us observe some of the most striking features of this growth of
+modern nationalities. [Sidenote: Conflict between Roman Idea and English
+Idea begins to become clearly visible in the thirteenth century]
+
+The reader of medieval history cannot fail to be impressed with the
+suddenness with which the culmination of the Holy Roman Empire, in
+the thirteenth century, was followed by a swift decline. The imperial
+position of the Hapsburgs was far less splendid than that of the
+Hohenstauffen; it rapidly became more German and less European, until
+by and by people began to forget what the empire originally meant.
+The change which came over the papacy was even more remarkable. The
+grandchildren of the men who had witnessed the spectacle of a king of
+France and a king of England humbled at the feet of Innocent III., the
+children of the men who had found the gigantic powers of a Frederick II.
+unequal to the task of curbing the papacy, now beheld the successors of
+St. Peter carried away to Avignon, there to be kept for seventy years
+under the supervision of the kings of France. Henceforth the glory of
+the papacy in its political aspect was to be but the faint shadow of
+that with which it had shone before. This sudden change in its position
+showed that the medieval dream of a world-empire was passing away,
+and that new powers were coming uppermost in the shape of modern
+nationalities with their national sovereigns. So long as these
+nationalities were in the weakness of their early formation, it was
+possible for pope and emperor to assert, and sometimes to come near
+maintaining, universal supremacy. But the time was now at hand when
+kings could assert their independence of the pope, while the emperor was
+fast sinking to be merely one among kings.
+
+As modern kingdoms thus grew at the expense of empire and papacy above,
+so they also grew at the expense of feudal dukedoms, earldoms, and
+baronies below. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were as fatal
+to feudalism as to world-empire and world-church. A series of wars
+occurring at this time were especially remarkable for the wholesale
+slaughter of the feudal nobility, whether on the field or under the
+headsman's axe. This was a conspicuous feature of the feuds of the
+Trastamare in Spain, of the English invasions of France, followed by the
+quarrel between Burgundians and Armagnacs, and of the great war of the
+Roses in England. So thorough-going was the butchery in England, for
+example, that only twenty-nine lay peers could be found to sit in the
+first parliament of Henry VII in 1485. The old nobility was almost
+annihilated, both in person and in property; for along with the
+slaughter there went wholesale confiscation, and this added greatly to
+the disposable wealth of the crown. The case was essentially similar in
+France and Spain. In all three countries the beginning of the sixteenth
+century saw the power of the crown increased and increasing. Its vast
+accessions of wealth made it more independent of legislative assemblies,
+and at the same time enabled it to make the baronage more subservient in
+character by filling up the vacant places with new creations of its own.
+Through the turbulent history of the next two centuries, we see the
+royal power aiming at unchecked supremacy and in the principal instances
+attaining it except in England. Absolute despotism was reached first in
+Spain, under Philip II.; in France it was reached a century later, under
+Louis XIV.; and at about the same time in the hereditary estates of
+Austria; while over all the Italian and German soil of the disorganized
+empire, except among the glaciers of Switzerland and the dykes of the
+Netherlands, the play of political forces had set up a host of petty
+tyrannies which aped the morals and manners of the great autocrats at
+Paris and Madrid and Vienna. [Sidenote: Increasing power of the crown]
+
+As we look back over this growth of modern monarchy, we cannot but
+be struck with the immense practical difficulty of creating a strong
+nationality without sacrificing self-government. Powerful, indeed, is
+the tendency toward over-centralization, toward stagnation, toward
+political death. Powerful is the tendency to revert to the Roman, if not
+to the Oriental method. As often as we reflect upon the general state of
+things at the end of the seventeenth century--the dreadful ignorance and
+misery which prevailed among most of the people of continental Europe,
+and apparently without hope of remedy--so often must we be impressed
+anew with the stupendous significance of the part played by
+self-governing England in overcoming dangers which have threatened the
+very existence of modern civilization. It is not too much to say that
+in the seventeenth century the entire political future of mankind was
+staked upon the questions that were at issue in England. To keep the
+sacred flame of liberty alive required such a rare and wonderful
+concurrence of conditions that, had our forefathers then succumbed in
+the strife, it is hard to imagine how or where the failure could have
+been repaired. Some of these conditions we have already considered; let
+us now observe one of the most important of all. Let us note the part
+played by that most tremendous of social forces, religious sentiment,
+in its relation to the political circumstances which we have passed
+in review. If we ask why it was that among modern nations absolute
+despotism was soonest and most completely established in Spain, we find
+it instructive to observe that the circumstances under which the
+Spanish monarchy grew up, during centuries of deadly struggle with the
+Mussulman, were such as to enlist the religious sentiment on the side of
+despotic methods in church and state. It becomes interesting, then, to
+observe by contrast how it was that in England the dominant religious
+sentiment came to be enlisted on the side of political freedom.
+[Illustration: Had it not been for the Puritans, political liberty would
+probably have disappeared from the world]
+
+In such an inquiry we have nothing to do with the truth or falsity of
+any system of doctrines, whether Catholic or Protestant. The legitimate
+purposes of the historian do not require him to intrude upon the
+province of the theologian. Our business is to trace the sequence of
+political cause and effect. Nor shall we get much help from crude
+sweeping statements which set forth Catholicism as invariably the enemy
+and Protestantism as invariably the ally of human liberty. The Catholic
+has a right to be offended at statements which would involve a
+Hildebrand or a St. Francis in the same historical judgment with a
+Sigismund or a Torquemada. The character of ecclesiastical as of all
+other institutions has varied with the character of the men who have
+worked them and the varying needs of the times and places in which they
+have been worked; and our intense feeling of the gratitude we owe to
+English Puritanism need in nowise diminish the enthusiasm with which we
+praise the glorious work of the mediaeval church. It is the duty of
+the historian to learn how to limit and qualify his words of blame or
+approval; for so curiously is human nature compounded of strength and
+weakness that the best of human institutions are likely to be infected
+with some germs of vice or folly. [Sidenote: Beginnings of Protestantism
+in the thirteenth century]
+
+Of no human institution is this more true than of the great medieval
+church of Gregory and Innocent when viewed in the light of its claims
+to unlimited temporal and spiritual sovereignty. In striking down the
+headship of the emperors, it would have reduced Europe to a sort of
+Oriental caliphate, had it not been checked by the rising spirit of
+nationality already referred to. But there was another and even mightier
+agency coming in to curb its undue pretensions to absolute sovereignty.
+That same thirteenth century which witnessed the culmination of its
+power witnessed also the first bold and determined manifestation of the
+Protestant temper of revolt against spiritual despotism. It was long
+before this that the earliest Protestant heresy had percolated into
+Europe, having its source, like so many other heresies, in that eastern
+world where the stimulating thought of the Greeks busied itself with the
+ancient theologies of Asia. From Armenia in the eighth century came the
+Manichaean sect of Paulicians into Thrace, and for twenty generations
+played a considerable part in the history of the Eastern Empire. In the
+Bulgarian tongue they were known as Bogomilians, or men constant in
+prayer. In Greek they were called Cathari, or "Puritans." They accepted
+the New Testament, but set little store by the Old; they laughed at
+transubstantiation, denied any mystical efficiency to baptism, frowned
+upon image-worship as no better than idolatry, despised the intercession
+of saints, and condemned the worship of the Virgin Mary. As for the
+symbol of the cross, they scornfully asked, "If any man slew the son of
+a king with a bit of wood, how could this piece of wood be dear to the
+king?" Their ecclesiastical government was in the main presbyterian, and
+in politics they showed a decided leaning toward democracy. They wore
+long faces, looked askance at frivolous amusements, and were terribly in
+earnest. Of the more obscure pages of mediaeval history, none are fuller
+of interest than those in which we decipher the westward progress of
+these sturdy heretics through the Balkan peninsula into Italy, and
+thence into southern France, where toward the end of the twelfth century
+we find their ideas coming to full blossom in the great Albigensian
+heresy. It was no light affair to assault the church in the days of
+Innocent III. The terrible crusade against the Albigenses, beginning in
+1207, was the joint work of the most powerful of popes and one of the
+most powerful of French kings. On the part of Innocent it was the
+stamping out of a revolt that threatened the very existence of
+the Catholic hierarchy; on the part of Philip Augustus it was the
+suppression of those too independent vassals the Counts of Toulouse, and
+the decisive subjection of the southern provinces to the government at
+Paris. Nowhere in European history do we read a more frightful story
+than that which tells of the blazing fires which consumed thousand after
+thousand of the most intelligent and thrifty people in France. It was
+now that the Holy Inquisition came into existence, and after forty years
+of slaughter these Albigensian Cathari or Puritans seemed exterminated.
+The practice of burning heretics, first enacted by statute in Aragon in
+1197, was adopted in most parts of Europe during the thirteenth century,
+but in England not until the beginning of the fifteenth. The Inquisition
+was never established in England. Edward II. attempted to introduce
+it in 1311 for the purpose of suppressing the Templars, but his utter
+failure showed that the instinct of self-government was too strong in
+the English people to tolerate the entrusting of so much power over
+men's lives to agents of the papacy. Mediaeval England was ignorant and
+bigoted enough, but under a representative government which so strongly
+permeated society, it was impossible to set the machinery of repression
+to work with such deadly thoroughness as it worked under the guidance of
+Roman methods. When we read the history of persecution in England, the
+story in itself is dreadful enough; but when we compare it with the
+horrors enacted in other countries, we arrive at some startling results.
+During the two centuries of English persecution, from Henry IV. to James
+I., some 400 persons were burned at the stake, and three-fourths of
+these cases occurred in 1555-57, the last three years of Mary Tudor.
+Now in a single province of Spain, in the single year 1482, about 2000
+persons were burned. The lowest estimates of the number slain for heresy
+in the Netherlands in the course of the sixteenth century place it at
+75,000. Very likely such figures are in many cases grossly exaggerated.
+But after making due allowance for this, the contrast is sufficiently
+impressive. In England the persecution of heretics was feeble and
+spasmodic, and only at one moment rose to anything like the appalling
+vigour which ordinarily characterized it in countries where the
+Inquisition was firmly established. Now among the victims of religious
+persecution must necessarily be found an unusual proportion of men and
+women more independent than the average in their thinking, and more
+bold than the average in uttering their thoughts. The Inquisition was a
+diabolical winnowing machine for removing from society the most flexible
+minds and the stoutest hearts; and among every people in which it was
+established for a length of time it wrought serious damage to the
+national character. It ruined the fair promise of Spain, and inflicted
+incalculable detriment upon the fortunes of France. No nation could
+afford to deprive itself of such a valuable element in its political
+life as was furnished in the thirteenth century by the intelligent and
+sturdy Cathari of southern Gaul. [Sidenote: The Cathari, or Puritans of
+the Eastern Empire] [Sidenote: The Albigenses] [Sidenote: Effects of
+persecution; its feebleness in England]
+
+The spirit of revolt against the hierarchy, though broken and repressed
+thus terribly by the measures of Innocent III., continued to live on
+obscurely in sequestered spots, in the mountains of Savoy, and Bosnia,
+and Bohemia, ready on occasion to spring into fresh and vigorous life.
+In the following century Protestant ideas were rapidly germinating in
+England, alike in baron's castle, in yeoman's farmstead, in citizen's
+shop, in the cloistered walks of the monastery. Henry Knighton,
+writing in the time of Richard II., declares, with the exaggeration of
+impatience, that every second man you met was a Lollard, or "babbler,"
+for such was the nickname given to these free-thinkers, of whom the most
+eminent was John Wyclif, professor at Oxford, and rector of Lutterworth,
+greatest scholar of the age. [Sidenote: Wyclif and the Lollards]
+
+The career of this man is a striking commentary upon the difference
+between England and continental Europe in the Middle Ages. Wyclif denied
+transubstantiation, disapproved of auricular confession, opposed the
+payment of Peter's pence, taught that kings should not be subject to
+prelates, translated the Bible into English and circulated it among the
+people, and even denounced the reigning pope as Antichrist; yet he was
+not put to death, because there was as yet no act of parliament for the
+burning of heretics, and in England things must be done according to the
+laws which the people had made. [1] Pope Gregory XI. issued five bulls
+against him, addressed to the king, the archbishop of Canterbury, and
+the university of Oxford; but their dictatorial tone offended the
+national feeling, and no heed was paid to them. Seventeen years after
+Wyclif's death, the statute for burning heretics was passed, and the
+persecution of Lollards began. It was feeble and ineffectual, however.
+Lollardism was never trampled out in England as Catharism was trampled
+out in France. Tracts of Wyclif and passages from his translation of
+the Bible were copied by hand and secretly passed about to be read on
+Sundays in the manor-house, or by the cottage fireside after the day's
+toil was over. The work went on quietly, but not the less effectively,
+until when the papal authority was defied by Henry VIII., it soon became
+apparent that England was half-Protestant already. It then appeared
+also that in this Reformation there were two forces cooperating,--the
+sentiment of national independence which would not brook dictation from
+Rome, and the Puritan sentiment of revolt against the hierarchy in
+general. The first sentiment had found expression again and again in
+refusals to pay tribute to Rome, in defiance of papal bulls, and in the
+famous statutes of _praemunire_, which made it a criminal offence to
+acknowledge any authority in England higher than the crown. The revolt
+of Henry VIII. was simply the carrying out of these acts of Edward I.
+and Edward III. to their logical conclusion. It completed the detachment
+of England from the Holy Roman Empire, and made her free of all the
+world. Its intent was political rather than religious. Henry, who wrote
+against Martin Luther, was far from wishing to make England a Protestant
+country. Elizabeth, who differed from her father in not caring a straw
+for theology, was by temperament and policy conservative. Yet England
+could not cease to be Papist without ceasing in some measure to be
+Catholic; nor could she in that day carry on war against Spain without
+becoming a leading champion of Protestantism. The changes in creed and
+ritual wrought by the government during this period were cautious and
+skilful; and the resulting church of England, with its long line of
+learned and liberal divines, has played a noble part in history.
+[Sidenote: Political character of Henry VIII's revolt against Rome]
+
+But along with this moderate Protestantism espoused by the English
+government, as consequent upon the assertion of English national
+independence, there grew up the fierce uncompromising democratic
+Protestantism of which the persecuted Lollards had sown the seeds. This
+was not the work of government. [Sidenote: The yeoman, Hugh Latimer]
+
+By the side of Henry VIII. stands the sublime figure of Hugh Latimer,
+most dauntless of preachers, the one man before whose stern rebuke the
+headstrong and masterful Tudor monarch quailed. It was Latimer
+that renewed the work of Wyclif. and in his life as well as in his
+martyrdom,--to use his own words of good cheer uttered while the fagots
+were kindling around him,--lighted "such a candle in England as by God's
+grace shall never be put out." This indomitable man belonged to that
+middle-class of self-governing, self-respecting yeomanry that has been
+the glory of free England and free America. He was one of the sturdy
+race that overthrew French chivalry at Crecy and twice drove the
+soldiery of a tyrant down the slope of Bunker Hill. In boyhood he worked
+on his father's farm and helped his mother to milk the thirty kine; he
+practised archery on the village green, studied in the village school,
+went to Cambridge, and became the foremost preacher of Christendom. Now
+the most thorough and radical work of the English Reformation was done
+by this class of men of which Latimer was the type. It was work that was
+national in its scope, arousing to fervent heat the strong religious
+and moral sentiment of the people, and hence it soon quite outran the
+cautious and conservative policy of the government, and tended to
+introduce changes extremely distasteful to those who wished to keep
+England as nearly Catholic as was consistent with independence of the
+pope. Hence before the end of Elizabeth's reign, we find the crown set
+almost as strongly against Puritanism as against Romanism. Hence, too,
+when under Elizabeth's successors the great decisive struggle between
+despotism and liberty was inaugurated, we find all the tremendous force
+of this newly awakened religious enthusiasm cooperating with the English
+love of self-government and carrying it under Cromwell to victory. From
+this fortunate alliance of religious and political forces has come all
+the noble and fruitful work of the last two centuries in which men of
+English speech have been labouring for the political regeneration of
+mankind. But for this alliance of forces, it is quite possible that the
+fateful seventeenth century might have seen despotism triumphant in
+England as on the continent of Europe, and the progress of civilization
+indefinitely arrested. [Sidenote: The moment of Cromwell's triumph was
+the most critical moment in history]
+
+In illustration of this possibility, observe what happened in France
+at the very time when the victorious English tendencies were shaping
+themselves in the reign of Elizabeth. In France there was a strong
+Protestant movement, but it had no such independent middle-class to
+support it as that which existed in England; nor had it been able to
+profit by such indispensable preliminary work as that which Wyclif had
+done; the horrible slaughter of the Albigenses had deprived France of
+the very people who might have played a part in some way analogous to
+that of the Lollards. Consequently the Protestant movement in France
+failed to become a national movement. Against the wretched Henry III who
+would have temporized with it, and the gallant Henry IV who honestly
+espoused it, the oppressed peasantry and townsmen made common cause by
+enlisting under the banner of the ultra-Catholic Guises. The mass of
+the people saw nothing in Protestantism but an idea favoured by the
+aristocracy and which they could not comprehend. Hence the great king
+who would have been glad to make France a Protestant country could only
+obtain his crown by renouncing his religion, while seeking to protect
+it by his memorable Edict of Nantes. But what a generous despot could
+grant, a bigoted despot might revoke; and before another century had
+elapsed, the good work done by Henry IV. was undone by Louis XIV., the
+Edict of Nantes was set aside, the process of casting out the most
+valuable political element in the community was carried to completion,
+and seven percent of the population of France was driven away and added
+to the Protestant populations of northern Germany and England and
+America. The gain to these countries and the damage to France was far
+greater than the mere figures would imply; for in determining the
+character of a community a hundred selected men and women are more
+potent than a thousand men and women taken at random. Thus while the
+Reformation in France reinforced to some extent the noble army of
+freemen, its triumphs were not to be the triumphs of Frenchmen, but of
+the race which has known how to enlist under its banner the forces that
+fight for free thought, free speech, and self-government, and all that
+these phrases imply. [Sidenote: Contrast with France; fate of the
+Huguenots]
+
+In view of these facts we may see how tremendous was the question at
+stake with the Puritans of the seventeenth century. Everywhere else the
+Roman idea seemed to have conquered or to be conquering, while they
+seemed to be left as the forlorn hope of the human race. But from the
+very day when Oliver Cromwell reached forth his mighty arm to stop the
+persecutions in Savoy, the victorious English idea began to change the
+face of things. The next century saw William Pitt allied with Frederick
+of Prussia to save the work of the Reformation in central Europe and set
+in motion the train of events that were at last to make the people of
+the Teutonic fatherland a nation. At that same moment the keenest
+minds in France were awaking to the fact that in their immediate
+neighbourhood, separated from them only by a few miles of salt water,
+was a country where people were equal in the eye of the law. It was the
+ideas of Locke and Milton, of Vane and Sidney, that, when transplanted
+into French soil, produced that violent but salutary Revolution which
+has given fresh life to the European world. And contemporaneously with
+all this, the American nation came upon the scene, equipped as no
+other nation had ever been, for the task of combining sovereignty with
+liberty, indestructible union of the whole with indestructible life in
+the parts. The English idea has thus come to be more than national,
+it has become imperial. It has come to rule, and it has come to stay.
+[Sidenote: Victory of the English Idea]
+
+We are now in a position to answer the question when the Roman Empire
+came to an end, in so far as it can be answered at all. It did not come
+to its end at the hands of an Odovakar in the year 476, or of a Mahomet
+II in 1453, or of a Napoleon in 1806. It has been coming to its end as
+the Roman idea of nation-making has been at length decisively overcome
+by the English idea. For such a fact it is impossible to assign a date,
+because it is not an event but a stage in the endless procession
+of events. But we can point to landmarks on the way. Of movements
+significant and prophetic there have been many. The whole course of the
+Protestant reformation, from the thirteenth century to the nineteenth,
+is coincident with the transfer of the world's political centre of
+gravity from the Tiber and the Rhine to the Thames and the Mississippi.
+The whole career of the men who speak English has within this period
+been the most potent agency in this transfer. In these gigantic
+processes of evolution we cannot mark beginnings or endings by years,
+hardly even by centuries. But among the significant events which
+prophesied the final triumph of the English over the Roman idea, perhaps
+the most significant--the one which marks most incisively the dawning
+of a new era--was the migration of English Puritans across the Atlantic
+Ocean, to repeat in a new environment and on a far grander scale the
+work which their forefathers had wrought in Britain. The voyage of the
+Mayflower was not in itself the greatest event in this migration; but
+it serves to mark the era, and it is only when we study it in the mood
+awakened by the general considerations here set forth that we can
+properly estimate the historic importance of the great Puritan Exodus.
+[Sidenote: Significance of the Puritan Exodus]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE PURITAN EXODUS.
+
+
+In the preceding chapter I endeavoured to set forth and illustrate some
+of the chief causes which have shifted the world's political centre of
+gravity from the Mediterranean and the Rhine to the Atlantic and the
+Mississippi; from the men who spoke Latin to the men who speak English.
+In the course of the exposition we began to catch glimpses of the
+wonderful significance of the fact that--among the people who had
+first suggested the true solution of the difficult problem of making a
+powerful nation without sacrificing local self-government--when the
+supreme day of trial came, the dominant religious sentiment was arrayed
+on the side of political freedom and against political despotism. If we
+consider merely the territorial area which it covered, or the numbers
+of men slain in its battles, the war of the English parliament against
+Charles I. seems a trivial affair when contrasted with the gigantic
+but comparatively insignificant work of barbarians like Jinghis or
+Tamerlane. But if we consider the moral and political issues involved,
+and the influence of the struggle upon the future welfare of mankind,
+we soon come to see that there never was a conflict of more world-wide
+importance than that from which Oliver Cromwell came out victorious. It
+shattered the monarchical power in England at a time when monarchical
+power was bearing down all opposition in the other great countries of
+Europe. It decided that government by the people and for the people
+should not then perish from the earth. It placed free England in a
+position of such moral advantage that within another century the
+English Idea of political life was able to react most powerfully upon
+continental Europe. It was the study of English institutions by such men
+as Montesquieu and Turgot, Voltaire and Rousseau, that gave shape and
+direction to the French Revolution. That violent but wholesome clearing
+of the air, that tremendous political and moral awakening, which ushered
+in the nineteenth century in Europe, had its sources in the spirit
+which animated the preaching of Latimer, the song of Milton, the solemn
+imagery of Bunyan, the political treatises of Locke and Sidney, the
+political measures of Hampden and Pym. The noblest type of modern
+European statesmanship, as represented by Mazzini and Stein, is the
+spiritual offspring of seventeenth-century Puritanism. To speak of
+Naseby and Marston Moor as merely English victories would be as
+absurd as to restrict the significance of Gettysburg to the state of
+Pennsylvania. If ever there were men who laid down their lives in the
+cause of all mankind, it was those grim old Ironsides whose watchwords
+were texts from Holy Writ, whose battle-cries were hymns of praise.
+[Sidenote: Influence of Puritanism upon modern Europe]
+
+It was to this unwonted alliance of intense religious enthusiasm with
+the instinct of self-government and the spirit of personal independence
+that the preservation of English freedom was due. When James I. ascended
+the English throne, the forces which prepared the Puritan revolt had
+been slowly and quietly gathering strength among the people for at least
+two centuries. The work which Wyclif had begun in the fourteenth century
+had continued to go on in spite of occasional spasmodic attempts to
+destroy it with the aid of the statute passed in 1401 for the burning
+of heretics. The Lollards can hardly be said at any time to have
+constituted a sect, marked off from the established church by the
+possession of a system of doctrines held in common. The name by which
+they were known was a nickname which might cover almost any amount
+of diversity in opinion, like the modern epithets "free-thinker" and
+"agnostic." The feature which characterized the Lollards in common was a
+bold spirit of inquiry which led them, in spite of persecution, to read
+Wyclif's English Bible and call in question such dogmas and rites of the
+church as did not seem to find warrant in the sacred text. Clad in long
+robes of coarse red wool, barefoot, with pilgrim's staff in hand, the
+Lollard preachers fared to and fro among the quaint Gothic towns and
+shaded hamlets, setting forth the word of God wherever they could find
+listeners, now in the parish church or under the vaulted roof of the
+cathedral, now in the churchyard or market-place, or on some green
+hillside. During the fifteenth century persecution did much to check
+this open preaching, but passages from Wyclif's tracts and texts from
+the Bible were copied by hand and passed about among tradesmen and
+artisans, yeomen and plough-boys, to be pondered over and talked about
+and learned by heart. It was a new revelation to the English people,
+this discovery of the Bible. Christ and his disciples seemed to come
+very near when the beautiful story of the gospels was first read in
+the familiar speech of every-day life. Heretofore they might well have
+seemed remote and unreal, just as the school-boy hardly realizes that
+the Cato and Cassius over whom he puzzles in his Latin lessons were once
+living men like his father and neighbours, and not mere nominatives
+governing a verb, or ablatives of means or instrument. Now it became
+possible for the layman to contrast the pure teachings of Christ with
+the doctrines and demeanour of the priests and monks to whom the
+spiritual guidance of Englishmen had been entrusted. Strong and
+self-respecting men and women, accustomed to manage their own affairs,
+could not but be profoundly affected by the contrast. [Sidenote: Work of
+the Lollards]
+
+While they were thus led more and more to appeal to the Bible as the
+divine standard of right living and right thinking, at the same time
+they found in the sacred volume the treasures of a most original and
+noble literature unrolled before them; stirring history and romantic
+legend, cosmical theories and priestly injunctions, profound metaphysics
+and pithy proverbs, psalms of unrivalled grandeur and pastorals of
+exquisite loveliness, parables fraught with solemn meaning, the mournful
+wisdom of the preacher, the exultant faith of the apostle, the matchless
+eloquence of Job and Isaiah, the apocalyptic ecstasy of St. John. At a
+time when there was as yet no English literature for the common people,
+this untold wealth of Hebrew literature was implanted in the English
+mind as in a virgin soil. Great consequences have flowed from the fact
+that the first truly popular literature in England--the first which
+stirred the hearts of all classes of people, and filled their minds with
+ideal pictures and their every-day speech with apt and telling phrases--
+was the literature comprised within the Bible. The superiority of the
+common English version of the Bible, made in the reign of James I., over
+all other versions, is a fact generally admitted by competent critics.
+The sonorous Latin of the Vulgate is very grand, but in sublimity of
+fervour as in the unconscious simplicity of strength it is surpassed
+by the English version, which is scarcely if at all inferior to the
+original, while it remains to-day, and will long remain, the noblest
+monument of English speech. The reason for this is obvious. The common
+English version of the Bible was made by men who were not aiming at
+literary effect, but simply gave natural expression to the feelings
+which for several generations had clustered around the sacred text. They
+spoke with the voice of a people, which is more than the voice of the
+most highly gifted man. They spoke with the voice of a people to whom
+the Bible had come to mean all that it meant to the men who wrote it. To
+the Englishmen who listened to Latimer, to the Scotchmen who listened
+to Knox, the Bible more than filled the place which in modern times
+is filled by poem and essay, by novel and newspaper and scientific
+treatise. To its pages they went for daily instruction and comfort,
+with its strange Semitic names they baptized their children, upon its
+precepts, too often misunderstood and misapplied, they sought to build
+up a rule of life that might raise them above the crude and unsatisfying
+world into which they were born. [Sidenote: The English version of the
+Bible]
+
+It would be wrong to accredit all this awakening of spiritual life in
+England to Wyclif and the Lollards, for it was only after the Bible, in
+the translations of Tyndall and Coverdale, had been made free to the
+whole English people in the reign of Edward VI. that its significance
+began to be apparent; and it was only a century later, in the time of
+Cromwell and Milton, that its full fruition was reached. It was with the
+Lollards, however, that the spiritual awakening began and was continued
+until its effects, when they came, were marked by surprising maturity
+and suddenness. Because the Lollards were not a clearly defined sect, it
+was hard to trace the manifold ramifications of their work. During the
+terrible Wars of the Roses, contemporary chroniclers had little or
+nothing to say about the labours of these humble men, which seemed
+of less importance than now, when we read them in the light of their
+world-wide results. From this silence some modern historians have
+carelessly inferred that the nascent Protestantism of the Lollards had
+been extinguished by persecution under the Lancastrian kings, and was in
+nowise continuous with modern English Protestantism. Nothing could be
+more erroneous. The extent to which the Lollard leaven had permeated all
+classes of English society was first clearly revealed when Henry VIII.
+made his domestic affairs the occasion for a revolt against the Papacy.
+Despot and brute as he was in many ways, Henry had some characteristics
+which enabled him to get on well with his people. He not only
+represented the sentiment of national independence, but he had a truly
+English reverence for the forms of law. In his worst acts he relied upon
+the support of his Parliament, which he might in various ways cajole or
+pack, but could not really enslave. In his quarrel with Rome he could
+have achieved but little, had he not happened to strike a chord of
+feeling to which the English people, trained by this slow and subtle
+work of the Lollards, responded quickly and with a vehemence upon which
+he had not reckoned. As if by magic, the fabric of Romanism was broken
+to pieces in England, monasteries were suppressed and their abbots
+hanged, the authority of the Pope was swept away, and there was no
+powerful party, like that of the Guises in France to make such sweeping
+measures the occasion for civil war. The whole secret of Henry's swift
+success lay in the fact that the English people were already more than
+half Protestant in temper, and needed only an occasion for declaring
+themselves. Hence, as soon as Catholic Henry died, his youthful son
+found himself seated on the throne of a Protestant nation. The terrible
+but feeble persecution which followed under Mary did much to strengthen
+the extreme Protestant sentiment by allying it with the outraged feeling
+of national independence. The bloody work of the grand-daughter of
+Ferdinand and Isabella, the doting wife of Philip II., was rightly felt
+to be Spanish work; and never, perhaps, did England feel such a sense of
+relief as on the auspicious day which welcomed to the throne the great
+Elizabeth, an Englishwoman in every fibre, and whose mother withal was
+the daughter of a plain country gentleman. But the Marian persecution
+not only increased the strength of the extreme Protestant sentiment, but
+indirectly it supplied it with that Calvinistic theology which was to
+make it indomitable. Of the hundreds of ministers and laymen who fled
+from England in 1555 and the two following years, a great part found
+their way to Geneva, and thus came under the immediate personal
+influence of that man of iron who taught the very doctrines for which
+their souls were craving, and who was then at the zenith of his power.
+[Sidenote: Secret of Henry VIII.'s swift success in his revolt against
+Rome] [Sidenote: Effects of the persecution under Mary]
+
+Among all the great benefactors of mankind the figure of Calvin is
+perhaps the least attractive. He was, so to speak, the constitutional
+lawyer of the Reformation, with vision as clear, with head as cool, with
+soul as dry, as any old solicitor in rusty black that ever dwelt in
+chambers in Lincoln's Inn. His sternness was that of the judge who
+dooms a criminal to the gallows. His theology had much in it that is in
+striking harmony with modern scientific philosophy, and much in it, too,
+that the descendants of his Puritan converts have learned to loathe as
+sheer diabolism. It is hard for us to forgive the man who burned Michael
+Servetus, even though it was the custom of the time to do such things
+and the tender-hearted Melanchthon found nothing to blame in it. It is
+not easy to speak of Calvin with enthusiasm, as it comes natural to
+speak of the genial, whole-souled, many-sided, mirth-and-song-loving
+Luther. Nevertheless it would be hard to overrate the debt which mankind
+owe to Calvin. The spiritual father of Coligny, of William the Silent,
+and of Cromwell must occupy a foremost rank among the champions of
+modern democracy. Perhaps not one of the mediaeval popes was more
+despotic in temper than Calvin; but it is not the less true that the
+promulgation of his theology was one of the longest steps that mankind
+have taken toward personal freedom. Calvinism left the individual man
+alone in the presence of his God. His salvation could not be wrought by
+priestly ritual, but only by the grace of God abounding in his soul; and
+wretched creature that he felt himself to be, through the intense moral
+awakening of which this stern theology was in part the expression, his
+soul was nevertheless of infinite value, and the possession of it was
+the subject of an everlasting struggle between the powers of heaven and
+the powers of hell. In presence of the awful responsibility of life, all
+distinctions of rank and fortune vanished; prince and pauper were alike
+the helpless creatures of Jehovah and suppliants for his grace. Calvin
+did not originate these doctrines; in announcing them he was but setting
+forth, as he said, the Institutes of the Christian religion; but in
+emphasizing this aspect of Christianity, in engraving it upon men's
+minds with that keen-edged logic which he used with such unrivalled
+skill, Calvin made them feel, as it had perhaps never been felt before,
+the dignity and importance of the individual human soul. It was a
+religion fit to inspire men who were to be called upon to fight for
+freedom, whether in the marshes of the Netherlands or on the moors of
+Scotland. In a church, moreover, based upon such a theology there was
+no room for prelacy. Each single church tended to become an independent
+congregation of worshippers, constituting one of the most effective
+schools that has ever existed for training men in local self-government.
+[Sidenote: Calvin's theology in its political bearings]
+
+When, therefore, upon the news of Elizabeth's accession to the throne,
+the Protestant refugees made their way back to England, they came as
+Calvinistic Puritans. Their stay upon the Continent had been short, but
+it had been just enough to put the finishing touch upon the work that
+had been going on since the days of Wyclif. Upon such men and their
+theories Elizabeth could not look with favour. With all her father's
+despotic temper, Elizabeth possessed her mother's fine tact, and
+she represented so grandly the feeling of the nation in its
+life-and-death-struggle with Spain and the pope, that never perhaps in
+English history has the crown wielded so much real power as during the
+five-and-forty years of her wonderful reign.
+
+One day Elizabeth asked a lady of the court how she contrived to retain
+her husband's affection. The lady replied that "she had confidence
+in her husband's understanding and courage, well founded on her own
+steadfastness not to offend or thwart, but to cherish and obey, whereby
+she did persuade her husband of her own affection, and in so doing did
+command his." "Go to, go to, mistress," cried the queen, "You are
+wisely bent, I find. After such sort do I keep the good will of all
+my husbands, my good people; for if they did not rest assured of some
+special love towards them, they would not readily yield me such good
+obedience." [2] Such a theory of government might work well in the hands
+of an Elizabeth, and in the circumstances in which England was then
+placed; but it could hardly be worked by a successor. The seeds of
+revolt were already sown. The disposition to curb the sovereign was
+growing and would surely assert itself as soon as it should have some
+person less loved and respected than Elizabeth to deal with. The queen
+in some measure foresaw this, and in the dogged independence and
+uncompromising enthusiasm of the Puritans she recognized the rock on
+which the monarchy might dash itself into pieces. She therefore hated
+the Puritans, and persecuted them zealously with one hand, while
+circumstances forced her in spite of herself to aid and abet them with
+the other. She could not maintain herself against Spain without helping
+the Dutch and the Huguenots; but every soldier she sent across the
+channel came back, if he came at all, with his head full of the
+doctrines of Calvin; and these stalwart converts were reinforced by the
+refugees from France and the Netherlands who came flocking into English
+towns to set up their thrifty shops and hold prayer-meetings in their
+humble chapels. To guard the kingdom against the intrigues of Philip and
+the Guises and the Queen of Scots, it was necessary to choose the most
+zealous Protestants for the most responsible positions, and such men
+were more than likely to be Calvinists and Puritans. Elizabeth's great
+ministers, Burleigh, Walsingham, and Nicholas Bacon, were inclined
+toward Puritanism; and so were the naval heroes who won the most
+fruitful victories of that century, by shattering the maritime power of
+Spain and thus opening the way for Englishmen to colonize North America.
+If we would realize the dangers that would have beset the Mayflower and
+her successors but for the preparatory work of these immortal sailors,
+we must remember the dreadful fate of Ribault and his Huguenot followers
+in Florida, twenty-three years before that most happy and glorious
+event, the destruction of the Spanish Armada. But not even the devoted
+men and women who held their prayer-meetings in the Mayflower's cabin
+were more constant in prayer or more assiduous in reading the Bible than
+the dauntless rovers, Drake and Hawkins, Gilbert and Cavendish. In the
+church itself, too, the Puritan spirit grew until in 1575-83 it seized
+upon Grindal, archbishop of Canterbury, who incurred the queen's
+disfavour by refusing to meddle with the troublesome reformers or to
+suppress their prophesyings. By the end of the century the majority
+of country gentlemen and of wealthy merchants in the towns had become
+Puritans, and the new views had made great headway in both universities,
+while at Cambridge they had become dominant. [Sidenote: Elizabeth's
+policy, and its effects] [Sidenote: Puritan Sea-rovers]
+
+This allusion to the universities may serve to introduce the very
+interesting topic of the geographical distribution of Puritanism in
+England. No one can study the history of the two universities without
+being impressed with the greater conservatism of Oxford, and the greater
+hospitality of Cambridge toward new ideas. Possibly the explanation
+may have some connection with the situation of Cambridge upon the East
+Anglian border. The eastern counties of England have often been remarked
+as rife in heresy and independency. For many generations the coast
+region between the Thames and the Humber was a veritable _litus
+haereticum._ Longland, bishop of Lincoln in 1520, reported Lollardism as
+especially vigorous and obstinate in his diocese, where more than two
+hundred heretics were once brought before him in the course of a single
+visitation. It was in Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex, and
+among the fens of Ely, Cambridge, and Huntingdon, that Puritanism was
+strongest at the end of the sixteenth century. It was as member and
+leading spirit of the Eastern Counties Association that Oliver Cromwell
+began his military career; and in so far as there was anything sectional
+in the struggle between Charles I. and the Long Parliament, it was a
+struggle which ended in the victory of east over west. East Anglia was
+from first to last the one region in which the supremacy of Parliament
+was unquestionable and impregnable, even after the strength of its
+population had been diminished by sending some thousands of picked men
+and women to America. While every one of the forty counties of England
+was represented in the great Puritan exodus, the East Anglian counties
+contributed to it far more than all the rest. Perhaps it would not be
+far out of the way to say that two-thirds of the American people who can
+trace their ancestry to New England might follow it back to the East
+Anglian shires of the mother-country; one-sixth might follow it to those
+southwestern countries--Devonshire, Dorset, and Somerset--which so
+long were foremost in maritime enterprise; one-sixth to other parts of
+England. I would not insist upon the exactness of such figures, in a
+matter where only a rough approximation is possible; but I do not think
+they overstate the East Anglian preponderance. It was not by accident
+that the earliest counties of Massachusetts were called Norfolk,
+Suffolk, and Essex, or that Boston in Lincolnshire gave its name to the
+chief city of New England. The native of Connecticut or Massachusetts
+who wanders about rural England to-day finds no part of it so homelike
+as the cosy villages and smiling fields and quaint market towns as he
+fares leisurely and in not too straight a line from Ipswich toward Hull.
+Countless little unobtrusive features remind him of home. The very names
+on the sign-boards over the sleepy shops have an unwontedly familiar
+look. In many instances the homestead which his forefathers left, when
+they followed Winthrop or Hooker to America, is still to be found,
+well-kept and comfortable; the ancient manor-house built of massive
+unhewn stone, yet in other respects much like the New England farmhouse,
+with its long sloping roof and gable end toward the road, its staircase
+with twisted balusters running across the shallow entry-way, its low
+ceilings with their sturdy oaken beams, its spacious chimneys, and its
+narrow casements from which one might have looked out upon the anxious
+march of Edward IV. from Ravenspur to the field of victory at Barnet
+in days when America was unknown. Hard by, in the little parish church
+which has stood for perhaps a thousand years, plain enough and bleak
+enough to suit the taste of the sternest Puritan, one may read upon
+the cold pavement one's own name and the names of one's friends and
+neighbours in startling proximity, somewhat worn and effaced by the
+countless feet that have trodden there. And yonder on the village green
+one comes with bated breath upon the simple inscription which tells of
+some humble hero who on that spot in the evil reign of Mary suffered
+death by fire. Pursuing thus our interesting journey, we may come at
+last to the quiet villages of Austerfield and Scrooby, on opposite
+banks of the river Idle, and just at the corner of the three shires of
+Lincoln, York, and Nottingham. It was from this point that the Puritan
+exodus to America was begun. [Sidenote: Puritanism was strongest in the
+eastern counties] [Sidenote: Preponderance of East Anglia in the Puritan
+exodus]
+
+It was not, however, in the main stream of Puritanism, but in one of its
+obscure rivulets that this world-famous movement originated. During the
+reign of Elizabeth it was not the purpose of the Puritans to separate
+themselves from the established church of which the sovereign was the
+head, but to remain within it and reform it according to their own
+notions. For a time they were partially successful in this work,
+especially in simplifying the ritual and in giving a Calvinistic tinge
+to the doctrines. In doing this they showed no conscious tendency toward
+freedom of thought, but rather a bigotry quite as intense as that which
+animated the system against which they were fighting. The most advanced
+liberalism of Elizabeth's time was not to be found among the Puritans,
+but in the magnificent treatise on "Ecclesiastical Polity" by the
+churchman Richard Hooker. But the liberalism of this great writer, like
+that of Erasmus a century earlier, was not militant enough to meet the
+sterner demands of the time. It could not then ally itself with the
+democratic spirit, as Puritanism did. It has been well said that while
+Luther was the prophet of the Reformation that has been, Erasmus was the
+prophet of the Reformation that is to come, and so it was to some extent
+with the Puritans and Hooker. The Puritan fight against the hierarchy
+was a political necessity of the time, something without which no real
+and thorough reformation could then be effected. In her antipathy to
+this democratic movement, Elizabeth vexed and tormented the Puritans
+as far as she deemed it prudent; and in the conservative temper of the
+people she found enough support to prevent their transforming the church
+as they would have liked to do. Among the Puritans themselves, indeed,
+there was no definite agreement on this point. Some would have stopped
+short with Presbyterianism, while others held that "new presbyter was
+but old priest writ large," and so pressed on to Independency. It was
+early in Elizabeth's reign that the zeal of these extreme brethren,
+inflamed by persecution, gave rise to the sect of Separatists, who
+flatly denied the royal supremacy over ecclesiastical affairs, and
+asserted the right to set up churches of their own, with pastors
+and elders and rules of discipline, independent of queen or bishop.
+[Sidenote: Puritanism was not intentionally allied with liberalism]
+
+In 1567 the first congregation of this sort, consisting of about a
+hundred persons assembled in a hall in Anchor Lane in London, was
+forcibly broken up and thirty-one of the number were sent to jail and
+kept there for nearly a year. By 1576 the Separatists had come to be
+recognized as a sect, under the lead of Robert Brown, a man of high
+social position, related to the great Lord Burleigh. Brown fled to
+Holland, where he preached to a congregation of English exiles, and
+wrote books which were smuggled into England and privately circulated
+there, much to the disgust, not only of the queen, but of all parties,
+Puritans as well as High Churchmen. The great majority of Puritans,
+whose aim was not to leave the church, but to stay in it and control
+it, looked with dread and disapproval upon these extremists who seemed
+likely to endanger their success by forcing them into deadly opposition
+to the crown. Just as in the years which ushered in our late Civil War,
+the opponents of the Republicans sought to throw discredit upon them by
+confusing them with the little sect of Abolitionists; and just as the
+Republicans, in resenting the imputation, went so far as to frown upon
+the Abolitionists, so that in December, 1860, men who had just voted for
+Mr. Lincoln were ready to join in breaking up "John Brown meetings" in
+Boston; so it was with religious parties in the reign of Elizabeth. The
+opponents of the Puritans pointed to the Separatists, and cried, "See
+whither your anarchical doctrines are leading!" and in their eagerness
+to clear themselves of this insinuation, the leading Puritans were as
+severe upon the Separatists as anybody. It is worthy of note that in
+both instances the imputation, so warmly resented, was true. Under the
+pressure of actual hostilities the Republicans did become Abolitionists,
+and in like manner, when in England it came to downright warfare the
+Puritans became Separatists. But meanwhile it fared ill with the little
+sect which everybody hated and despised. Their meetings were broken up
+by mobs. In an old pamphlet describing a "tumult in Fleet Street, raised
+by the disorderly preachment, pratings, and prattlings of a swarm of
+Separatists," one reads such sentences as the following: "At length they
+catcht one of them alone, but they kickt him so vehemently as if they
+meant to beat him into a jelly. It is ambiguous whether they have kil'd
+him or no, but for a certainty they did knock him about as if they meant
+to pull him to pieces. I confesse it had been no matter if they had
+beaten the whole tribe in the like manner." For their leaders the
+penalty was more serious. The denial of the queen's ecclesiastical
+supremacy could be treated as high treason, and two of Brown's friends,
+convicted of circulating his books, were sent to the gallows. In spite
+of these dangers Brown returned to England in 1585. William the Silent
+had lately been murdered, and heresy in Holland was not yet safe from
+the long arm of the Spaniard. Brown trusted in Lord Burleigh's ability
+to protect him, but in 1588, finding himself in imminent danger, he
+suddenly recanted and accepted a comfortable living under the bishops
+who had just condemned him. His followers were already known as
+Brownists; henceforth their enemies took pains to call them so and twit
+them with holding doctrines too weak for making martyrs. [Sidenote:
+Robert Brown and the Separatists]
+
+The flimsiness of Brown's moral texture prevented him from becoming the
+leader in the Puritan exodus to New England. That honour was reserved
+for William Brewster, son of a country gentleman who had for many
+years been postmaster at Scrooby. The office was then one of high
+responsibility and influence. After taking his degree at Cambridge,
+Brewster became private secretary to Sir William Davison, whom he
+accompanied on his mission to the Netherlands. When Davison's public
+career came to an end in 1587, Brewster returned to Scrooby, and soon
+afterward succeeded his father as postmaster, in which position he
+remained until 1607. During the interval Elizabeth died, and James
+Stuart came from Scotland to take her place on the throne. [Sidenote:
+William Brewster]
+
+The feelings with which the late queen had regarded Puritanism were mild
+compared with the sentiments entertained by her successor. For some
+years he had been getting worsted in his struggle with the Presbyterians
+of the northern kingdom. His vindictive memory treasured up the day when
+a mighty Puritan preacher had in public twitched him by the sleeve and
+called him "God's silly vassal." "I tell you, sir," said Andrew Melville
+on that occasion, "there are two kings and two kingdoms in Scotland.
+There is Christ Jesus the King, and his kingdom the Kirk, whose subject
+James VI. is, and of whose kingdom not a king, nor a lord, nor a head,
+but a member. And they whom Christ hath called to watch over his kirk
+and govern his spiritual kingdom have sufficient power and authority so
+to do both together and severally." In this bold and masterful speech
+we have the whole political philosophy of Puritanism, as in a nutshell.
+Under the guise of theocratic fanaticism, and in words as arrogant as
+ever fell from priestly lips, there was couched the assertion of the
+popular will against despotic privilege. Melville could say such things
+to the king's face and walk away unharmed, because there stood behind
+him a people fully aroused to the conviction that there is an eternal
+law of God, which kings no less than scullions must obey. [3] Melville
+knew this full well, and so did James know it in the bitterness of his
+heart. He would have no such mischievous work in England. He despised
+Elizabeth's grand national policy which his narrow intellect could not
+comprehend. He could see that in fighting Spain and aiding Dutchmen and
+Huguenots she was strengthening the very spirit that sought to pull
+monarchy down. In spite of her faults, which were neither few nor small,
+the patriotism of that fearless woman was superior to any personal
+ambition. It was quite otherwise with James. He was by no means
+fearless, and he cared more for James Stuart than for either England or
+Scotland. He had an overweening opinion of his skill in kingcraft. In
+coming to Westminster it was his policy to use his newly acquired
+power to break down the Puritan party in both kingdoms and to fasten
+episcopacy upon Scotland. In pursuing this policy he took no heed of
+English national sentiment, but was quite ready to defy and insult it,
+even to the point of making--before children who remembered the Armada
+had yet reached middle age--an alliance with the hated Spaniard. In such
+wise James succeeded in arraying against the monarchical principle the
+strongest forces of English life,--the sentiment of nationality, the
+sentiment of personal freedom, and the uncompromising religious fervour
+of Calvinism; and out of this invincible combination of forces has been
+wrought the nobler and happier state of society in which we live to-day.
+[Sidenote: James Stuart and Andrew Melville]
+
+Scarcely ten months had James been king of England when he invited
+the leading Puritan clergymen to meet himself and the bishops in a
+conference at Hampton Court, as he wished to learn what changes they
+would like to make in the government and ritual of the church. In the
+course of the discussion he lost his temper and stormed, as was his
+wont. [Sidenote: King James's view of the political situation]
+
+The mention of the word "presbytery" lashed him into fury. "A Scottish
+presbytery," he cried, "agreeth as well with a monarchy as God and the
+Devil. Then Jack and Tom and Will and Dick shall meet, and at their
+pleasures censure me and my council and all our proceedings .... Stay,
+I pray you, for one seven years, before you demand that from me, and if
+then you find me pursy and fat, and my windpipes stuffed, I will perhaps
+hearken to you .... Until you find that I grow lazy, let that alone."
+One of the bishops declared that in this significant tirade his Majesty
+spoke by special inspiration from Heaven! The Puritans saw that their
+only hope lay in resistance. If any doubt remained, it was dispelled by
+the vicious threat with which the king broke up the conference. "I will
+_make_ them conform," said he, "or I will harry them out of the land."
+
+These words made a profound sensation in England, as well they might,
+for they heralded the struggle which within half a century was to
+deliver up James's son to the executioner. The Parliament of 1604 met
+in angrier mood than any Parliament which had assembled at Westminster
+since the dethronement of Richard II. Among the churches non-conformity
+began more decidedly to assume the form of secession. The key-note of
+the conflict was struck at Scrooby. Staunch Puritan as he was, Brewster
+had not hitherto favoured the extreme measures of the Separatists. Now
+he withdrew from the church, and gathered together a company of men and
+women who met on Sundays for divine service in his own drawing-room at
+Scrooby Manor. In organizing this independent Congregationalist
+society, Brewster was powerfully aided by John Robinson, a native of
+Lincolnshire. Robinson was then thirty years of age, and had taken his
+master's degree at Cambridge in 1600. He was a man of great learning and
+rare sweetness of temper, and was moreover distinguished for a broad and
+tolerant habit of mind too seldom found among the Puritans of that day.
+Friendly and unfriendly writers alike bear witness to his spirit of
+Christian charity and the comparatively slight value which he attached
+to orthodoxy in points of doctrine; and we can hardly be wrong in
+supposing that the comparatively tolerant behaviour of the Plymouth
+colonists, whereby they were contrasted with the settlers of
+Massachusetts, was in some measure due to the abiding influence of the
+teachings of this admirable man. Another important member of the Scrooby
+congregation was William Bradford, of the neighbouring village of
+Austerfield, then a lad of seventeen years, but already remarkable for
+maturity of intelligence and weight of character. Afterward governor of
+Plymouth for nearly thirty years, he became the historian of his colony;
+and to his picturesque chronicle, written in pure and vigorous English,
+we are indebted for most that we know of the migration that started
+from Scrooby and ended in Plymouth. [Sidenote: The congregation of
+Separatists at Scrooby]
+
+It was in 1606--two years after King James's truculent threat--that
+this independent church of Scrooby was organized. Another year had not
+elapsed before its members had suffered so much at the hands of officers
+of the law, that they began to think of following the example of former
+heretics and escaping to Holland. After an unsuccessful attempt in
+the autumn of 1607, they at length succeeded a few months later in
+accomplishing their flight to Amsterdam, where they hoped to find a
+home. But here they found the English exiles who had preceded them so
+fiercely involved in doctrinal controversies, that they decided to
+go further in search of peace and quiet. This decision, which we may
+ascribe to Robinson's wise counsels, served to keep the society of
+Pilgrims from getting divided and scattered. They reached Leyden in
+1609, just as the Spanish government had sullenly abandoned the hopeless
+task of conquering the Dutch, and had granted to Holland the Twelve
+Years Truce. During eleven of these twelve years the Pilgrims remained
+in Leyden, supporting themselves by various occupations, while their
+numbers increased from 300 to more than 1000. Brewster opened a
+publishing house, devoted mainly to the issue of theological books.
+Robinson accepted a professorship in the university, and engaged in the
+defence of Calvinism against the attacks of Episcopius, the successor
+of Arminius. The youthful Bradford devoted himself to the study of
+languages,--Dutch, French, Latin, Greek, and finally Hebrew; wishing,
+as he said, to "see with his own eyes the ancient oracles of God in all
+their native beauty." During their sojourn in Leyden the Pilgrims were
+introduced to a strange and novel spectacle,--the systematic legal
+toleration of all persons, whether Catholic or Protestant, who called
+themselves followers of Christ. Not that there was not plenty of
+intolerance in spirit, but the policy inaugurated by the idolized
+William the Silent held it in check by law. All persons who came to
+Holland, and led decorous lives there, were protected in their opinions
+and customs. By contemporary writers in other countries this eccentric
+behaviour of the Dutch government was treated with unspeakable scorn.
+"All strange religions flock thither," says one; it is "a common harbour
+of all heresies," a "cage of unclean birds," says another; "the great
+mingle mangle of religion," says a third. [4] In spite of the relief
+from persecution, however, the Pilgrims were not fully satisfied with
+their new home. The expiration of the truce with Spain might prove that
+this relief was only temporary; and at any rate, complete toleration
+did not fill the measure of their wants. Had they come to Holland as
+scattered bands of refugees, they might have been absorbed into the
+Dutch population, as Huguenot refugees have been absorbed in Germany,
+England, and America. But they had come as an organized community, and
+absorption into a foreign nation was something to be dreaded. They
+wished to preserve their English speech and English traditions, keep up
+their organization, and find some favoured spot where they might lay the
+corner-stone of a great Christian state. The spirit of nationality was
+strong in them; the spirit of self-government was strong in them; and
+the only thing which could satisfy these feelings was such a migration
+as had not been seen since ancient times, a migration like that of
+Phokaians to Massilia or Tyrians to Carthage. [Sidenote: The flight to
+Holland] [Sidenote: Why the Pilgrims did not stay there]
+
+It was too late in the world's history to carry out such a scheme upon
+European soil. Every acre of territory there was appropriated. The only
+favourable outlook was upon the Atlantic coast of America, where English
+cruisers had now successfully disputed the pretensions of Spain, and
+where after forty years of disappointment and disaster a flourishing
+colony had at length been founded in Virginia. The colonization of the
+North American coast had now become part of the avowed policy of the
+British government. In 1606 a great joint-stock company was formed for
+the establishment of two colonies in America. The branch which was to
+take charge of the proposed southern colony had its headquarters in
+London; the management of the northern branch was at Plymouth in
+Devonshire. Hence the two branches are commonly spoken of as the London
+and Plymouth companies. The former was also called the Virginia Company,
+and the latter the North Virginia Company, as the name of Virginia was
+then loosely applied to the entire Atlantic coast north of Florida. The
+London Company had jurisdiction from 34 degrees to 38 degrees north
+latitude; the Plymouth Company had jurisdiction from 45 degrees down to
+41 degrees; the intervening territory, between 38 degrees and 41 degrees
+was to go to whichever company should first plant a self-supporting
+colony. The local government of each colony was to be entrusted to a
+council resident in America and nominated by the king; while general
+supervision over both colonies was to be exercised by a council resident
+in England. [Sidenote: The London and Plymouth companies]
+
+In pursuance of this general plan, though with some variations in
+detail, the settlement of Jamestown had been begun in 1607, and its
+success was now beginning to seem assured. On the other hand all the
+attempts which had been made to the north of the fortieth parallel had
+failed miserably. As early as 1602 Bartholomew Gosnold, with 32 men, had
+landed on the headland which they named Cape Cod from the fish found
+thereabouts in great numbers. This was the first English name given to
+any spot in that part of America, and so far as known these were the
+first Englishmen that ever set foot there. They went on and gave names
+to Martha's Vineyard and the Elizabeth Islands in Buzzard's Bay; and
+on Cuttyhunk they built some huts with the intention of remaining, but
+after a month's experience they changed their mind and went back to
+England. Gosnold's story interested other captains, and on Easter
+Sunday, 1605, George Weymouth set sail for North Virginia, as it was
+called. He found Cape Cod and coasted northward as far as the Kennebec
+river, up which he sailed for many miles. Weymouth kidnapped five
+Indians and carried them to England, that they might learn the language
+and acquire a wholesome respect for the arts of civilization and the
+resistless power of white men. His glowing accounts of the spacious
+harbours, the abundance of fish and game, the noble trees, the luxuriant
+herbage, and the balmy climate, aroused general interest in England, and
+doubtless had some influence upon the formation, in the following year,
+of the great joint-stock company just described. The leading spirit of
+the Plymouth Company was Sir John Popham, chief-justice of England, and
+he was not disposed to let his friends of the southern branch excel him
+in promptness. Within three months after the founding of Jamestown, a
+party of 120 colonists, led by the judge's kinsman George Popham, landed
+at the mouth of the Kennebec, and proceeded to build a rude village of
+some fifty cabins, with storehouse, chapel, and block-house. When
+they landed in August they doubtless shared Weymouth's opinion of the
+climate. These Englishmen had heard of warm countries like Italy and
+cold countries like Russia; harsh experience soon taught them that there
+are climates in which the summer of Naples may alternate with the winter
+of Moscow. The president and many others fell sick and died. News came
+of the death of Sir John Popham in England, and presently the weary and
+disappointed settlers abandoned their enterprise and returned to their
+old homes. Their failure spread abroad in England the opinion that
+North Virginia was uninhabitable by reason of the cold, and no further
+attempts were made upon that coast until in 1614 it was visited by
+Captain John Smith. [Sidenote: First exploration of the New England
+coast]
+
+The romantic career of this gallant and garrulous hero did not end with
+his departure from the infant colony at Jamestown. By a curious destiny
+his fame is associated with the beginnings of both the southern and the
+northern portions of the United States. To Virginia Smith may be said to
+have given its very existence as a commonwealth; to New England he
+gave its name. In 1614 he came over with two ships to North Virginia,
+explored its coast minutely from the Penobscot river to Cape Cod, and
+thinking it a country of such extent and importance as to deserve a name
+of its own, rechristened it New England. On returning home he made a
+very good map of the coast and dotted it with English names suggested by
+Prince Charles. Of these names Cape Elizabeth, Cape Ann, Charles River,
+and Plymouth still remain where Smith placed them. In 1615 Smith again
+set sail for the New World, this time with a view to planting a colony
+under the auspices of the Plymouth Company, but his talent for strange
+adventures had not deserted him. He was taken prisoner by a French
+fleet, carried hither and thither on a long cruise, and finally set
+ashore at Rochelle, whence, without a penny in his pocket, he contrived
+to make his way back to England. Perhaps Smith's life of hardship may
+have made him prematurely old. After all his wild and varied experience
+he was now only in his thirty-seventh year, but he does not seem to have
+gone on any more voyages. The remaining sixteen years of his life
+were spent quietly in England in writing books, publishing maps, and
+otherwise stimulating the public interest in the colonization of the New
+World. But as for the rocky coast of New England, which he had explored
+and named, he declared that he was not so simple as to suppose that any
+other motive than riches would "ever erect there a commonwealth or draw
+company from their ease and humours at home, to stay in New England."
+[Sidenote: John Smith]
+
+In this opinion, however, the bold explorer was mistaken. Of all
+migrations of peoples the settlement of New England is preeminently
+the one in which the almighty dollar played the smallest part, however
+important it may since have become as a motive power. It was left for
+religious enthusiasm to achieve what commercial enterprise had failed
+to accomplish. By the summer of 1617 the Pilgrim society at Leyden had
+decided to send a detachment of its most vigorous members to lay
+the foundations of a Puritan state in America. There had been much
+discussion as to the fittest site for such a colony. Many were in favour
+of Guiana, which Sir Walter Raleigh had described in such glowing
+colours; but it was thought that the tropical climate would be
+ill-suited to northern men of industrious and thrifty habit, and the
+situation, moreover, was dangerously exposed to the Spaniards. Half a
+century had scarcely elapsed since the wholesale massacre of Huguenots
+in Florida. Virginia was then talked of, but Episcopal ideas had already
+taken root there. New England, on the other hand, was considered too
+cold. Popham's experience was not encouraging. But the country about
+the Delaware river afforded an opportunity for erecting an independent
+colony under the jurisdiction of the London Company, and this seemed
+the best course to pursue. Sir Edwin Sandys, the leading spirit in the
+London Company, was favourably inclined toward Puritans, and through him
+negotiations were begun. Capital to the amount of £7000 was furnished
+by seventy merchant adventurers in England, and the earnings of the
+settlers were to be thrown into a common stock until these subscribers
+should have been remunerated. A grant of land was obtained from the
+London Company, and the king was asked to protect the emigrants by a
+charter, but this was refused. James, however, made no objections to
+their going, herein showing himself less of a bigot than Louis XIV.
+in later days, who would not suffer a Huguenot to set foot in Canada,
+though France was teeming with Huguenots who would have been glad
+enough to go. When James inquired how the colonists expected to support
+themselves, some one answered, most likely by fishing. "Very good,"
+quoth the king, "it was the Apostles' own calling." He declared that no
+one should molest them so long as they behaved themselves properly. From
+this unwonted urbanity it would appear that James anticipated no trouble
+from the new colony. A few Puritans in America could not do much to
+annoy him, and there was of course a fair chance of their perishing, as
+so many other colonizers had perished. [Sidenote: The Pilgrims at Leyden
+decide to make a settlement near the Delaware river]
+
+The congregation at Leyden did not think it wise to cut loose from
+Holland until they should have secured a foothold in America. It was but
+an advance guard that started out from Delft haven late in July, 1620,
+in the rickety ship Speedwell, with Brewster and Bradford, and sturdy
+Miles Standish, a trained soldier whose aid was welcome, though he does
+not seem to have belonged to the congregation. Robinson remained at
+Leyden, and never came to America. After a brief stop at Southampton,
+where they met the Mayflower with friends from London, the Pilgrims
+again set sail in the two ships. The Speedwell sprang a leak, and they
+stopped at Dartmouth for repairs. Again they started, and had put three
+hundred miles of salt water between themselves and Land's End, when the
+Speedwell leaked so badly that they were forced to return. When they
+dropped anchor at Plymouth in Devonshire, about twenty were left on
+shore, and the remainder, exactly one hundred in number, crowded into
+the Mayflower and on the 6th of September started once more to cross the
+Atlantic. The capacity of the little ship was 180 tons, and her strength
+was but slight. In a fierce storm in mid-ocean a mainbeam amidships was
+wrenched and cracked, and but for a huge iron screw which one of the
+passengers had brought from Delft, they might have gone to the bottom.
+The foul weather prevented any accurate calculation of latitude and
+longitude, and they were so far out in their reckoning that when they
+caught sight of land on the 9th of November, it was to Cape Cod that
+they had come. Their patent gave them no authority to settle here, as
+it was beyond the jurisdiction of the London Company. They turned their
+prow southward, but encountering perilous shoals and a stiff headwind
+they desisted and sought shelter in Cape Cod bay. On the 11th they
+decided to find some place of abode in this neighbourhood, anticipating
+no difficulty in getting a patent from the Plymouth Company, which was
+anxious to obtain settlers. For five weeks they stayed in the ship while
+little parties were exploring the coast and deciding upon the best site
+for a town. It was purely a coincidence that the spot which they chose
+had already received from John Smith the name of Plymouth, the beautiful
+port in Devonshire from which the Mayflower had sailed. [Sidenote:
+Founding of Plymouth]
+
+There was not much to remind them of home in the snow-covered coast on
+which they landed. They had hoped to get their rude houses built before
+the winter should set in, but the many delays and mishaps had served to
+bring them ashore in the coldest season. When the long winter came to
+an end, fifty-one of the hundred Pilgrims had died,--a mortality even
+greater than that before which the Popham colony had succumbed. But
+Brewster spoke truth when he said, "It is not with us as with men whom
+small things can discourage or small discontentments cause to wish
+themselves at home again." At one time the living were scarcely able to
+bury the dead; only Brewster, Standish, and five other hardy ones were
+well enough to get about. At first they were crowded under a single
+roof, and as glimpses were caught of dusky savages skulking among the
+trees, a platform was built on the nearest hill and a few cannon were
+placed there in such wise as to command the neighbouring valleys and
+plains. By the end of the first summer the platform had grown to a
+fortress, down from which to the harbour led a village street with seven
+houses finished and others going up. Twenty-six acres had been cleared,
+and a plentiful harvest gathered in; venison, wild fowl, and fish were
+easy to obtain. When provisions and fuel had been laid in for the
+ensuing winter, Governor Bradford appointed a day of Thanksgiving.
+Town-meetings had already been held, and a few laws passed. The history
+of New England had begun.
+
+This had evidently been a busy summer for the forty-nine survivors.
+On the 9th of November, the anniversary of the day on which they had
+sighted land, a ship was descried in the offing. She was the Fortune,
+bringing some fifty more of the Leyden company. It was a welcome
+reinforcement, but it diminished the rations of food that could be
+served during the winter, for the Fortune was not well supplied. When
+she set sail for England, she carried a little cargo of beaver-skins and
+choice wood for wainscoting to the value of L500 sterling, as a first
+instalment of the sum due to the merchant adventurers. But this cargo
+never reached England, for the Fortune was overhauled by a French
+cruiser and robbed of everything worth carrying away.
+
+For two years more it was an anxious and difficult time for the new
+colony. By 1624 its success may be said to have become assured. That the
+Indians in the neighbourhood had not taken advantage of the distress of
+the settlers in that first winter, and massacred every one of them, was
+due to a remarkable circumstance. Early in 1617 a frightful pestilence
+had swept over New England and slain, it is thought, more than half the
+Indian population between the Penobscot river and Narragansett bay. Many
+of the Indians were inclined to attribute this calamity to the murder of
+two or three white fishermen the year before. They had not got over the
+superstitious dread with which the first sight of white men had inspired
+them, and now they believed that the strangers held the demon of the
+plague at their disposal and had let him loose upon the red men in
+revenge for the murders they had committed. This wholesome delusion
+kept their tomahawks quiet for a while. When they saw the Englishmen
+establishing themselves at Plymouth, they at first held a powwow in
+the forest, at which the new-comers were cursed with all the elaborate
+ingenuity that the sorcery of the medicine-men could summon for so
+momentous an occasion; but it was deemed best to refrain from merely
+human methods of attack. It was not until the end of the first winter
+that any of them mustered courage to visit the palefaces. Then an Indian
+named Samoset, who had learned a little English from fishermen and for
+his own part was inclined to be friendly, came one day into the
+village with words of welcome. He was so kindly treated that presently
+Massasoit, principal sachem of the Wampanoags, who dwelt between
+Narragansett and Cape Cod bays, came with a score of painted and
+feathered warriors and squatting on a green rug and cushions in the
+governor's log-house smoked the pipe of peace, while Standish with
+half-a-dozen musketeers stood quietly by. An offensive and defensive
+alliance was then and there made between King Massasoit and King James,
+and the treaty was faithfully kept for half a century. Some time
+afterward, when Massasoit had fallen sick and lay at death's door, his
+life was saved by Edward Winslow, who came to his wigwam and skilfully
+nursed him. Henceforth the Wampanoag thought well of the Pilgrim. The
+powerful Narragansetts, who dwelt on the farther side of the bay, felt
+differently, and thought it worth while to try the effect of a threat.
+A little while after the Fortune had brought its reinforcement, the
+Narragansett sachem Canonicus sent a messenger to Plymouth with a bundle
+of newly-made arrows wrapped in a snake-skin. The messenger threw it
+in at the governor's door and made off with unseemly haste. Bradford
+understood this as a challenge, and in this he was confirmed by a
+friendly Wampanoag. The Narragansetts could muster 2000 warriors, for
+whom forty or fifty Englishmen, even with firearms, were hardly a fair
+match; but it would not do to show fear. Bradford stuffed the snake-skin
+with powder and bullets, and sent it back to Canonicus, telling him that
+if he wanted war he might come whenever he liked and get his fill of it.
+When the sachem saw what the skin contained, he was afraid to touch
+it or have it about, and medicine-men, handling it no doubt gingerly
+enough, carried it out of his territory. [Sidenote: Why the colony was
+not attacked by the Indians]
+
+It was a fortunate miscalculation that brought the Pilgrims to New
+England. Had they ventured upon the lands between the Hudson and the
+Delaware, they would probably have fared worse. They would soon have
+come into collision with the Dutch, and not far from that neighbourhood
+dwelt the Susquehannocks, at that time one of the most powerful and
+ferocious tribes on the continent. For the present the new-comers were
+less likely to be molested in the Wampanoag country than anywhere else.
+In the course of the year 1621 they obtained their grant from the
+Plymouth Company. This grant was not made to them directly but to
+the joint-stock company of merchant adventurers with whom they were
+associated. But the alliance between the Pilgrims and these London
+merchants was not altogether comfortable; there was too much divergence
+between their aims. In 1627 the settlers, wishing to be entirely
+independent, bought up all the stock and paid for it by instalments
+from the fruits of their labour. By 1633 they had paid every penny, and
+become the undisputed owners of the country they had occupied.
+
+Such was the humble beginning of that great Puritan exodus from England
+to America which had so much to do with founding and peopling the United
+States. These Pilgrims of the Mayflower were but the pioneers of a
+mighty host. Historically their enterprise is interesting not so much
+for what it achieved as for what it suggested. Of itself the Plymouth
+colony could hardly have become a wealthy and powerful state. Its growth
+was extremely slow. After ten years its numbers were but three hundred.
+In 1643, when the exodus had come to an end, and the New England
+Confederacy was formed, the population of Plymouth was but three
+thousand. In an established community, indeed, such a rate of increase
+would be rapid, but it was not sufficient to raise in New England a
+power which could overcome Indians and Dutchmen and Frenchmen, and
+assert its will in opposition to the crown. It is when we view the
+founding of Plymouth in relation to what came afterward, that it assumes
+the importance which belongs to the beginning of a new era.
+
+We have thus seen how it was that the political aspirations of James I.
+toward absolute sovereignty resulted in the beginnings of the Puritan
+exodus to America. In the next chapter we shall see how the still more
+arbitrary policy of his ill-fated son all at once gave new dimensions to
+that exodus and resulted in the speedy planting of a high-spirited and
+powerful New England.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE PLANTING OF NEW ENGLAND.
+
+
+When Captain George Weymouth in the summer of 1605 sailed into the
+harbour of Plymouth in Devonshire, with his five kidnapped savages and
+his glowing accounts of the country since known as New England, the
+garrison of that fortified seaport was commanded by Sir Ferdinando
+Gorges. The Christian name of this person now strikes us as rather odd,
+but in those days it was not so uncommon in England, and it does not
+necessarily indicate a Spanish or Italian ancestry for its bearer.
+Gorges was a man of considerable ability, but not of high character. On
+the downfall of his old patron the Earl of Essex he had contrived to
+save his own fortunes by a course of treachery and ingratitude. He had
+served in the Dutch war against Spain, and since 1596 had been military
+governor of Plymouth. The sight of Weymouth's Indians and the recital of
+his explorations awakened the interest of Gorges in the colonization of
+North America. He became one of the most active members of the Plymouth,
+or North Virginia, Company established in the following year. It was he
+who took the leading part in fitting out the two ships with which John
+Smith started on his unsuccessful expedition in 1615. In the following
+years he continued to send out voyages of exploration, became largely
+interested in the fisheries, and at length in 1620 succeeded in
+obtaining a new patent for the Plymouth Company, by which it was made
+independent of the London Company, its old yoke-fellow and rival. This
+new document created a corporation of forty patentees who, sitting in
+council as directors of their enterprise, were known as the Council for
+New England. The president of this council was King James's unpopular
+favourite the Duke of Buckingham, and its most prominent members
+were the earls of Pembroke and Lenox, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, and
+Shakespeare's friend the Earl of Southampton. This council was empowered
+to legislate for its American territory, to exercise martial law there
+and expel all intruders, and to exercise a monopoly of trade within the
+limits of the patent. Such extensive powers, entrusted to a company of
+which Buckingham was the head, excited popular indignation, and in the
+great struggle against monopolies which was then going on, the Plymouth
+Company did not fail to serve as a target for attacks. It started,
+however, with too little capital to enter upon schemes involving
+immediate outlay, and began almost from the first to seek to increase
+its income by letting or selling portions of its territory, which
+extended from the latitude of Philadelphia to that of Quebec, thus
+encroaching upon regions where Holland and France were already gaining
+a foothold. It was from this company that the merchant adventurers
+associated with the Mayflower Pilgrims obtained their new patent in
+the summer of 1621, and for the next fifteen years all settlers in New
+England based their claims to the soil upon territorial rights conveyed
+to them by the Plymouth Company. The grants, however, were often
+ignorantly and sometimes unscrupulously made, and their limits were so
+ill-defined that much quarrelling ensued. [Sidenote: Sir Ferdinando
+Gorges, and the Council for New England]
+
+During the years immediately following the voyage of the Mayflower,
+several attempts at settlement were made about the shores of
+Massachusetts bay. One of the merchant adventurers, Thomas Weston, took
+it into his head in 1622 to separate from his partners and send out a
+colony of seventy men on his own account. These men made a settlement
+at Wessagusset, some twenty-five miles north of Plymouth. They were a
+disorderly, thriftless rabble, picked up from the London streets, and
+soon got into trouble with the Indians; after a year they were glad
+to get back to England as best they could, and in this the Plymouth
+settlers willingly aided them. In June of that same year 1622 there
+arrived on the scene a picturesque but ill understood personage, Thomas
+Morton, "of Clifford's Inn, Gent.," as he tells on the title-page of
+his quaint and delightful book, the "New English Canaan." Bradford
+disparagingly says that he "had been a kind of petie-fogger of
+Furnifell's Inn"; but the churchman Samuel Maverick declares that he
+was a "gentleman of good qualitie." He was an agent of Sir Ferdinando
+Gorges, and came with some thirty followers to make the beginnings of
+a royalist and Episcopal settlement in the Massachusetts bay. He was
+naturally regarded with ill favour by the Pilgrims as well as by the
+later Puritan settlers, and their accounts of him will probably
+bear taking with a grain or two of salt. [Sidenote: Wessagusset and
+Merrymount]
+
+In 1625 there came one Captain Wollaston, with a gang of indented white
+servants, and established himself on the site of the present town
+of Quincy. Finding this system of industry ill suited to northern
+agriculture, he carried most of his men off to Virginia, where he sold
+them. Morton took possession of the site of the settlement, which he
+called Merrymount. There, according to Bradford, he set up a "schoole of
+athisme," and his men did quaff strong waters and comport themselves "as
+if they had anew revived and celebrated the feasts of ye Roman Goddes
+Flora, or the beastly practices of ye madd Bachanalians." Charges of
+atheism have been freely hurled about in all ages. In Morton's case the
+accusation seems to have been based upon the fact that he used the Book
+of Common Prayer. His men so far maintained the ancient customs of
+merry England as to plant a Maypole eighty feet high, about which they
+frolicked with the redskins, while furthermore they taught them the
+use of firearms and sold them muskets and rum. This was positively
+dangerous, and in the summer of 1628 the settlers at Merrymount were
+dispersed by Miles Standish. Morton was sent to England, but returned
+the next year, and presently again repaired to Merrymount.
+
+By this time other settlements were dotted about the coast. There were
+a few scattered cottages or cabins at Nantasket and at the mouth of the
+Piscataqua, while Samuel Maverick had fortified himself on Noddle's
+Island, and William Blackstone already lived upon the Shawmut peninsula,
+since called Boston. These two gentlemen were no friends to the
+Puritans; they were churchmen and representatives of Sir Ferdinando
+Gorges.
+
+The case was very different with another of these earliest settlements,
+which deserves especial mention as coming directly in the line of
+causation which led to the founding of Massachusetts by Puritans. For
+some years past the Dorchester adventurers--a small company of merchants
+in the shire town of Dorset--had been sending vessels to catch fish off
+the New England coast. In 1623 these men conceived the idea of planting
+a small village as a fishing station, and setting up a church and
+preacher therein, for the spiritual solace of the fishermen and sailors.
+In pursuance of this scheme a small party occupied Cape Ann, where after
+two years they got into trouble with the men of Plymouth. Several grants
+and assignments had made it doubtful where the ownership lay, and
+although this place was not near their own town, the men of Plymouth
+claimed it. The dispute was amicably arranged by Roger Conant, an
+independent settler who had withdrawn from Plymouth because he did not
+fully sympathize with the Separatist views of the people there. The
+next step was for the Dorchester adventurers to appoint Conant as their
+manager, and the next was for them to abandon their enterprise, dissolve
+their partnership, and leave the remnant of the little colony to shift
+for itself. The settlers retained their tools and cattle, and Conant
+found for them a new and safer situation at Naumkeag, on the site of the
+present Salem. So far little seemed to have been accomplished; one more
+seemed added to the list of failures.
+
+But the excellent John White, the Puritan rector of Trinity Church in
+Dorchester, had meditated carefully about these things. He saw that
+many attempts at colonization had failed because they made use of unfit
+instruments, "a multitude of rude ungovernable persons, the very scum of
+the land." So Virginia had failed in its first years, and only succeeded
+when settled by worthy and industrious people under a strong government.
+The example of Plymouth, as contrasted with Wessagusset, taught a
+similar lesson. We desire, said White, "to raise a bulwark against the
+kingdom of Antichrist." Learn wisdom, my countrymen, from the ruin which
+has befallen the Protestants at Rochelle and in the Palatinate; learn
+"to avoid the plague while it is foreseen, and not to tarry as they did
+till it overtook them." The Puritan party in England was numerous and
+powerful, but the day of strife was not far off and none might foretell
+its issue. Clearly it was well to establish a strong and secure retreat
+in the New World, in case of disaster in the Old. What had been done at
+Plymouth by a few men of humble means might be done on a much greater
+scale by an association of leading Puritans, including men of wealth and
+wide social influence. Such arguments were urged in timely pamphlets, of
+one of which White is supposed to have been the author. The matter was
+discussed in London, and inquiry was made whether fit men could be found
+"to engage their persons in the voyage." "It fell out that among others
+they lighted at last on Master Endicott, a man well known to divers
+persons of good note, who manifested much willingness to accept of the
+offer as soon as it was tendered." All were thereby much encouraged, the
+schemes of White took definite shape, and on the 19th of March, 1628, a
+tract of land was obtained from the Council for New England, consisting
+of all the territory included between three miles north of the Merrimack
+and three miles south of the Charles in one direction, and the Atlantic
+and Pacific Oceans in the other. [Sidenote: John White and his noble
+scheme]
+
+This liberal grant was made at a time when people still supposed the
+Pacific coast to be not far west of Henry Hudson's river. The territory
+was granted to an association of six gentlemen, only one of whom--John
+Endicott--figures conspicuously in the history of New England. The
+grant was made in the usual reckless style, and conflicted with various
+patents which had been issued before. In 1622 Gorges and John Mason
+had obtained a grant of all the land between the rivers Kennebec
+and Merrimack, and the new grant encroached somewhat upon this. The
+difficulty seems to have been temporarily adjusted by some sort of
+compromise which restricted the new grant to the Merrimack, for in 1629
+we find Mason's title confirmed to the region between that river and the
+Piscataqua, while later on Gorges appears as proprietor of the territory
+between the Piscataqua and the Kennebec. A more serious difficulty was
+the claim of Robert Gorges, son of Sir Ferdinando. That young man had in
+1623 obtained a grant of some 300 square miles in Massachusetts, and had
+gone to look after it, but had soon returned discouraged to England
+and shortly afterward died. But his claim devolved upon his surviving
+brother, John Gorges, and Sir Ferdinando, in consenting to the grant to
+Endicott and his friends, expressly reserved the rights of his sons. No
+such reservation, however, was mentioned in the Massachusetts charter,
+and the colonists never paid the slightest heed to it. In these
+conflicting claims were sown seeds of trouble which bore fruit for more
+than half a century. In such cases actual possession is apt to make nine
+points in the law, and accordingly Endicott was sent over, as soon as
+possible, with sixty persons, to reinforce the party at Naumkeag and
+supersede Conant as its leader. On Endicott's arrival in September,
+1628, the settlers were at first inclined to dispute his authority, but
+they were soon conciliated, and in token of this amicable adjustment the
+place was called by the Hebrew name of Salem, or "peace." [Sidenote:
+Conflicting grants sow seeds of trouble] [Sidenote: John Endicot and the
+founding of Salem]
+
+Meanwhile Mr. White and the partners in England were pushing things
+vigorously. Their scheme took a wider scope. They were determined to
+establish something more than a trading company. From Charles I. it
+was sometimes easy to get promises because he felt himself under no
+obligation to keep them. In March, 1629, a royal charter was granted,
+creating a corporation, under the legal style of the Governor and
+Company of Massachusetts Bay in New England. The affairs of this
+corporate body were to be managed by a governor, deputy-governor, and a
+council of eighteen assistants, to be elected annually by the company.
+They were empowered to make such laws as they liked for their settlers,
+provided they did not contravene the laws of England,--a proviso
+susceptible of much latitude of interpretation. The place where the
+company was to hold its meetings was not mentioned in the charter. The
+law-officers of the crown at first tried to insert a condition that
+the government must reside in England, but the grantees with skilful
+argument succeeding in preventing this. Nothing was said in the charter
+about religious liberty, for a twofold reason: the crown would not have
+granted it, and it was not what the grantees wanted; such a provision
+would have been liable to hamper them seriously in carrying out their
+scheme. They preferred to keep in their own hands the question as to how
+much or how little religious liberty they should claim or allow. Six
+small ships were presently fitted out, and upon them were embarked 300
+men, 80 women, and 26 children, with 140 head of cattle, 40 goats, and
+abundance of arms, ammunition, and tools. The principal leader of this
+company was Francis Higginson, of St. John's College, Cambridge, rector
+of a church in Leicestershire, who had been deprived of his living for
+non-conformity. With him were associated two other ministers, also
+graduates of Cambridge. All three were members of the council. By the
+arrival of this company at Salem, Endicott now became governor of a
+colony larger than any yet started in New England,--larger than Plymouth
+after its growth of nearly nine years. [Sidenote: The Company of
+Massachusetts Bay]
+
+The time was at length ripe for that great Puritan exodus of which the
+voyage of the Mayflower had been the premonitory symptom. The grand
+crisis for the Puritans had come, the moment when decisive action could
+no longer be deferred. It was not by accident that the rapid development
+of John White's enterprise into the Company of Massachusetts Bay
+coincided exactly with the first four years of the reign of Charles I.
+They were years well fitted to bring such a scheme to quick maturity.
+The character of Charles was such as to exacerbate the evils of his
+father's reign. James could leave some things alone in the comfortable
+hope that all would by and by come out right, but Charles was not
+satisfied without meddling everywhere. Both father and son cherished
+some good intentions; both were sincere believers in their narrow theory
+of kingcraft. For wrong-headed obstinacy, utter want of tact, and
+bottomless perfidy, there was little to choose between them. The
+humorous epitaph of the grandson "whose word no man relies on" might
+have served for them all. But of this unhappy family Charles I. was
+eminently the dreamer. He lived in a world of his own, and was slow
+in rendering thought into action; and this made him rely upon the
+quick-witted but unwise and unscrupulous Buckingham, [5] who was silly
+enough to make feeble attempts at unpopular warfare without consulting
+Parliament. During each of Charles's first four years there was an
+angry session of Parliament, in which, through the unwillingness of the
+popular leaders to resort to violence, the king's policy seemed able
+to hold its ground. Despite all protest the king persisted in levying
+strange taxes and was to some extent able to collect them. Men who
+refused to pay enforced loans were thrown into jail and the writ of
+_habeas corpus_ was denied them. Meanwhile the treatment of Puritans
+became more and more vexatious. It was clear enough that Charles meant
+to become an absolute monarch, like Louis XIII., but Parliament began
+by throwing all the blame upon the unpopular minister and seeking to
+impeach him.
+
+On the 5th of June, 1628, the House of Commons presented the most
+extraordinary spectacle, perhaps in all its history. The famous Petition
+of Right had been Passed by both Houses, and the royal answer had just
+been received. Its tone was that of gracious assent, but it omitted the
+necessary legal formalities, and the Commons well knew what this meant.
+They were to be tricked with sweet words, and the petition was not to
+acquire the force of a statute. How was it possible to deal with such a
+slippery creature? There was but one way of saving the dignity of the
+throne without sacrificing the liberty of the people, and that was to
+hold the king's ministers responsible to Parliament, in anticipation
+of modern methods. It was accordingly proposed to impeach the Duke
+of Buckingham before the House of Lords. The Speaker now "brought an
+imperious message from the king, ... warning them ... that he would not
+tolerate any aspersion upon his ministers." Nothing daunted by this,
+Sir John Eliot arose to lead the debate, when the Speaker called him to
+order in view of the king's message. "Amid a deadly stillness" Eliot
+sat down and burst into tears. For a moment the House was overcome
+with despair. Deprived of all constitutional methods of redress, they
+suddenly saw yawning before them the direful alternative--slavery or
+civil war. Since the day of Bosworth a hundred and fifty years had
+passed without fighting worthy of mention on English soil, such an era
+of peace as had hardly ever before been seen on the earth; now half the
+nation was to be pitted against the other half, families were to be
+divided against themselves, as in the dreadful days of the Roses, and
+with what consequences no one could foresee. "Let us sit in silence,"
+quoth Sir Dudley Digges, "we are miserable, we know not what to do!"
+Nay, cried Sir Nathaniel Rich, "we _must_ now speak, or forever hold our
+peace." Then did grim Mr. Prynne and Sir Edward Coke mingle their words
+with sobs, while there were few dry eyes in the House. Presently they
+found their voices, and used them in a way that wrung from the startled
+king his formal assent to the Petition of Right. [Sidenote: Remarkable
+scene in the House of Commons]
+
+There is something strangely pathetic and historically significant [6]
+in the emotion of these stern, fearless men. The scene was no less
+striking on the 2d of the following March, when, "amid the cries and
+entreaties of the Speaker held down in his chair by force," while the
+Usher of the Black Rod was knocking loudly at the bolted door, and the
+tramp of the king's soldiers was heard in the courtyard, Eliot's clear
+voice rang out the defiance that whoever advised the levy of tonnage and
+poundage without a grant from Parliament, or whoever voluntarily paid
+those duties, was to be counted an enemy to the kingdom and a betrayer
+of its liberties. As shouts of "Aye, aye," resounded on every side, "the
+doors were flung open, and the members poured forth in a throng." The
+noble Eliot went to end his days in the Tower, and for eleven years no
+Parliament sat again in England. [7]
+
+It was in one and the same week that Charles I. thus began his
+experiment of governing without a Parliament, and that he granted a
+charter to the Company of Massachusetts Bay. He was very far, as we
+shall see, from realizing the import of what he was doing. To the
+Puritan leaders it was evident that a great struggle was at hand.
+Affairs at home might well seem desperate, and the news from abroad was
+not encouraging. It was only four months since the surrender of Rochelle
+had ended the existence of the Huguenots as an armed political party.
+They had now sunk into the melancholy condition of a tolerated sect
+which may at any moment cease to be tolerated. In Germany the
+terrible Thirty Years War had just reached the darkest moment for
+the Protestants. Fifteen months were yet to pass before the immortal
+Gustavus was to cross the Baltic and give to the sorely harassed cause
+of liberty a fresh lease of life. The news of the cruel Edict of
+Restitution in this same fateful month of March, 1629, could not but
+give the English Puritans great concern. Everywhere in Europe the
+champions of human freedom seemed worsted. They might well think that
+never had the prospect looked so dismal; and never before, as never
+since, did the venture of a wholesale migration to the New World so
+strongly recommend itself as the only feasible escape from a situation
+that was fast becoming intolerable. Such were the anxious thoughts of
+the leading Puritans in the spring of 1629, and in face of so grave a
+problem different minds came naturally to different conclusions. Some
+were for staying in England to fight it out to the bitter end; some were
+for crossing the ocean to create a new England in the wilderness. Either
+task was arduous enough, and not to be achieved without steadfast and
+sober heroism. [Sidenote: Desperate nature of the crisis]
+
+On the 26th of August twelve gentlemen, among the most eminent in the
+Puritan party, held a meeting at Cambridge, and resolved to lead a
+migration to New England, provided the charter of the Massachusetts Bay
+Company and the government established under it could be transferred to
+that country. On examination it appeared that no legal obstacle stood in
+the way. Accordingly such of the old officers as did not wish to take
+part in the emigration resigned their places, which were forthwith
+filled by these new leaders. For governor the choice fell upon John
+Winthrop, a wealthy gentleman from Groton in Suffolk, who was henceforth
+to occupy the foremost place among the founders of New England. Winthrop
+was at this time forty-one years of age, having been born in the
+memorable year of the Armada. He was a man of remarkable strength and
+beauty of character, grave and modest, intelligent and scholarlike,
+intensely religious and endowed with a moral sensitiveness that was
+almost morbid, yet liberal withal in his opinions and charitable in
+disposition. When his life shall have been adequately written, as it
+never has been, he will be recognized as one of the very noblest figures
+in American history. From early youth he had that same power of
+winning confidence and commanding respect for which Washington was so
+remarkable; and when he was selected as the Moses of the great Puritan
+exodus, there was a wide-spread feeling that extraordinary results were
+likely to come of such an enterprise.
+
+In marked contrast to Winthrop stands the figure of the man associated
+with him as deputy-governor. Thomas Dudley came of an ancient family,
+the history of which, alike in the old and in the new England, has not
+been altogether creditable. He represented the elder branch of that
+Norman family, to the younger branch of which belonged the unfortunate
+husband of Lady Jane Grey and the unscrupulous husband of Amy Robsart.
+There was, however, very little likeness to Elizabeth's gay lover
+in grim Thomas Dudley. His Puritanism was bleak and stern, and for
+Christian charity he was not eminent. He had a foible for making verses,
+and at his death there was found in his pocket a poem of his, containing
+a quatrain wherein the intolerance of that age is neatly summed up:--
+
+"Let men of God in courts and churches watch O'er such as do a
+Toleration hatch, Lest that ill egg bring forth a cockatrice To poison
+all with heresy and vice."
+
+Such was the spirit of most of the Puritans of that day, but in the
+manifestation of it there were great differences, and here was the
+strong contrast between Dudley and Winthrop,--a contrast which shows
+itself in their portraits. In that of Dudley we see the typical
+narrow-minded, strait-laced Calvinist for whom it is so much easier to
+entertain respect than affection. In that of Winthrop we see a face
+expressive of what was finest in the age of Elizabeth,--the face of a
+spiritual brother of Raleigh and Bacon.
+
+The accession of two men so important as Winthrop and Dudley served to
+bring matters speedily to a crisis. Their embarkation in April, 1630,
+was the signal for a general movement on the part of the English
+Puritans. Before Christmas of that year seventeen ships had come to
+New England, bringing more than 1000 passengers. This huge wave of
+immigration quite overwhelmed and bore away the few links of possession
+by which Gorges had thus far kept his hold upon the country. In January,
+1629, John Gorges had tried to assert the validity of his late brother's
+claim by executing conveyances covering portions of it. One of these
+was to John Oldham, a man who had been harshly treated at Plymouth, and
+might be supposed very ready to defend his rights against settlers
+of the Puritan company. Gorges further maintained that he retained
+possession of the country through the presence of his brother's tenants,
+Blackstone, Maverick, Walford, and others on the shores of the bay. In
+June, 1629, Endicott had responded by sending forward some fifty persons
+from Salem to begin the settlement of Charlestown. Shortly before
+Winthrop's departure from England, Gorges had sent that singular
+personage Sir Christopher Gardiner to look after his interests in the
+New World, and there he was presently found established near the mouth
+of the Neponset river, in company with "a comly yonge woman whom he
+caled his cousin." But these few claimants were now at once lost in the
+human tide which poured over Charlestown, Boston, Newtown, Watertown,
+Roxbury, and Dorchester. The settlement at Merrymount was again
+dispersed, and Morton sent back to London; Gardiner fled to the coast
+of Maine and thence sailed for England in 1632. The Puritans had indeed
+occupied the country in force.
+
+Here on the very threshold we are confronted by facts which show that
+not a mere colonial plantation, but a definite and organized state was
+in process of formation. The emigration was not like that of Jamestown
+or of Plymouth. It sufficed at once to make the beginnings of half a
+dozen towns, and the question as to self-government immediately sprang
+up. Early in 1631 a tax of £60 was assessed upon the settlements, in
+order to pay for building frontier fortifications at Newtown. This
+incident was in itself of small dimensions, as incidents in newly
+founded states are apt to be. But in its historic import it may serve
+to connect the England of John Hampden with the New England of Samuel
+Adams. The inhabitants of Watertown at first declined to pay this tax,
+which was assessed by the Board of Assistants, on the ground that
+English freemen cannot rightfully be taxed save by their own consent.
+This protest led to a change in the constitution of the infant colony,
+and here, at once, we are introduced to the beginnings of American
+constitutional history. At first it was thought that public business
+could be transacted by a primary assembly of all the freemen in the
+colony meeting four times in the year; but the number of freemen
+increased so fast that this was almost at once (in October, 1630) found
+to be impracticable. The right of choosing the governor and making the
+laws was then left to the Board of Assistants; and in May, 1631, it was
+further decided that the assistants need not be chosen afresh every
+year, but might keep their seats during good behaviour or until ousted
+by special vote of the freemen. If the settlers of Massachusetts had
+been ancient Greeks or Romans, this would have been about as far as they
+could go in the matter; the choice would have been between a primary
+assembly and an assembly of notables. It is curious to see Englishmen
+passing from one of these alternatives to the other. But it was only for
+a moment. The protest of the Watertown men came in time to check these
+proceedings, which began to have a decidedly oligarchical look. To
+settle the immediate question of the tax, two deputies were sent from
+each settlement to advise with the Board of Assistants; while the power
+of choosing each year the governor and assistants was resumed by the
+freemen. Two years later, in order to reserve to the freemen the power
+of making laws without interfering too much with the ordinary business
+of life, the colonists fell back upon the old English rural plan of
+electing deputies or representatives to a general court. [Sidenote: The
+question as to self-government raised at Watertown]
+
+At first the deputies sat in the same chamber with the assistants, but
+at length in 1644 they were formed into a second chamber with increased
+powers, and the way in which this important constitutional change came
+about is worth remembering, as an illustration of the smallness of the
+state which so soon was to play a great part in history. As Winthrop
+puts it, "there fell out a great business upon a very small occasion."
+To a certain Captain Keayne, of Boston, a rich man deemed to be hard and
+overbearing toward the poor, there was brought a stray pig, whereof he
+gave due public notice through the town-crier, yet none came to claim it
+till after he had killed a pig of his own which he kept in the same stye
+with the stray. A year having passed by, a poor woman named Sherman came
+to see the stray and to decide if it were one that she had lost. Not
+recognizing it as hers, she forthwith laid claim to the slaughtered pig.
+The case was brought before the elders of the church of Boston, who
+decided that the woman was mistaken. Mrs. Sherman then accused the
+captain of theft, and brought the case before a jury, which exonerated
+the defendant with £3 costs. The captain then sued Mrs. Sherman for
+defamation of character and got a verdict for £40 damages, a round
+sum indeed to assess upon the poor woman. But long before this it had
+appeared that she had many partisans and supporters; it had become a
+political question, in which the popular protest against aristocracy was
+implicated. Not yet browbeaten, the warlike Mrs. Sherman appealed to the
+General Court. The length of the hearing shows the importance which
+was attached to the case. After seven days of discussion, the vote
+was taken. Seven assistants and eight deputies approved the former
+decisions, two assistants and fifteen deputies condemned them, while
+seven deputies refrained from voting. In other words, Captain Keayne has
+a decided majority among the more aristocratic assistants, while Mrs.
+Sherman seemed to prevail with the more democratic deputies. Regarding
+the result as the vote of a single body, the woman had a plurality of
+two; regarding it as the vote of a double body, her cause had prevailed
+in the lower house, but was lost by the veto of the upper. No decision
+was reached at the time, but after a year of discussion the legislature
+was permanently separated into two houses, each with a veto power upon
+the other; and this was felt to be a victory for the assistants. As for
+the ecclesiastical polity of the new colony, it had begun to take
+shape immediately upon the arrival of Endicott's party at Salem. The
+clergymen, Samuel Skelton and Francis Higginson, consecrated each
+other, and a church covenant and confession of faith were drawn up by
+Higginson. Thirty persons joining in this covenant constituted the first
+church in the colony; and several brethren appointed by this church
+proceeded formally to ordain the two ministers by the laying on of
+hands. In such simple wise was the first Congregational church in
+Massachusetts founded. The simple fact of removal from England converted
+all the Puritan emigrants into Separatists, as Robinson had already
+predicted. Some, however, were not yet quite prepared for so radical a
+measure. These proceedings gave umbrage to two of the Salem party, who
+attempted forthwith to set up a separate church in conformity with
+episcopal models. A very important question was thus raised at once, but
+it was not allowed to disturb the peace of the colony. Endicott was a
+man of summary methods. He immediately sent the two malcontents back to
+England; and thus the colonial church not only seceded from the national
+establishment, but the principle was virtually laid down that the
+Episcopal form of worship would not be tolerated in the colony. For the
+present such a step was to be regarded as a measure of self-defence on
+the part of the colonists. Episcopacy to them meant actual and practical
+tyranny--the very thing they had crossed the ocean expressly to get
+away from--and it was hardly to be supposed that they would encourage
+the growth of it in their new home. One or two surpliced priests,
+conducting worship in accordance with the Book of Common Prayer, might
+in themselves be excellent members of society; but behind the surpliced
+priest the colonist saw the intolerance of Laud and the despotism of
+the Court of High Commission. In 1631 a still more searching measure
+of self-protection was adopted. It was decided that "no man shall be
+admitted to the freedom of this body politic, but such as are members of
+some of the churches within the limits of the same." Into the merits of
+this measure as illustrating the theocratic ideal of society which the
+Puritans sought to realize in New England, we shall inquire hereafter.
+At present we must note that, as a measure of self-protection, this
+decree was intended to keep out of the new community all emissaries of
+Strafford and Laud, as well as such persons as Morton and Gardiner and
+other agents of Sir Ferdinando Gorges.
+
+By the year 1634 the scheme of the Massachusetts Company had so far
+prospered that nearly 4000 Englishmen had come over, and some twenty
+villages on or near the shores of the bay had been founded. The building
+of permanent houses, roads, fences, and bridges had begun to go on quite
+briskly; farms were beginning to yield a return for the labour of the
+husbandman; lumber, furs, and salted fish were beginning to be sent to
+England in exchange for manufactured articles; 4000 goats and 1500 head
+of cattle grazed in the pastures, and swine innumerable rooted in the
+clearings and helped to make ready the land for the ploughman. Political
+meetings were held, justice was administered by magistrates after old
+English precedents, and church services were performed by a score of
+clergymen, nearly all graduates of Cambridge, though one or two had
+their degrees from Oxford, and nearly all of whom had held livings in
+the Church of England. The most distinguished of these clergymen, John
+Cotton, in his younger days a Fellow and Tutor of Emmanuel College, had
+for more than twenty years been rector of St. Botolph's, when he left
+the most magnificent parish church in England to hold service in the
+first rude meeting-house of the new Boston. From Emmanuel College came
+also Thomas Hooker and John Harvard. Besides these clergymen, so many of
+the leading persons concerned in the emigration were university men that
+it was not long before a university began to seem indispensable to
+the colony. In 1636 the General Court appropriated £400 toward the
+establishment of a college at Newtown. In 1638 John Harvard, dying
+childless, bequeathed his library and the half of his estate to the new
+college, which the Court forthwith ordered to be called by his name;
+while in honour of the mother university the name of the town was
+changed to Cambridge.
+
+[Illustration: Founding of Harvard College]
+
+It has been said that the assembly which decreed the establishment
+of Harvard College was "the first body in which the people, by their
+representatives, ever gave their own money to found a place of
+education." [8] The act was a memorable one if we have regard to all the
+circumstances of the year in which it was done. On every side danger was
+in the air. Threatened at once with an Indian war, with the enmity of
+the home government, and with grave dissensions among themselves, the
+year 1636 was a trying one indeed for the little community of Puritans,
+and their founding a college by public taxation just at this time is a
+striking illustration of their unalterable purpose to realize, in this
+new home, their ideal of an educated Christian society. [Sidenote:
+Threefold danger in the year 1636]
+
+That the government of Charles I. should view with a hostile eye the
+growth of a Puritan state in New England is not at all surprising. (1.
+From the king, who prepares to attack the infant colony but is fueled by
+dissensions at home.) The only fit ground for wonder would seem to be
+that Charles should have been willing at the outset to grant a charter
+to the able and influential Puritans who organized the Company of
+Massachusetts Bay. Probably, however, the king thought at first that it
+would relieve him at home if a few dozen of the Puritan leaders could
+be allowed to concentrate their minds upon a project of colonization in
+America. It might divert attention for a moment from his own despotic
+schemes. Very likely the scheme would prove a failure and the
+Massachusetts colony incur a fate like that of Roanoke Island; and at
+all events the wealth of the Puritans might better be sunk in a remote
+and perilous enterprise than employed at home in organizing resistance
+to the crown. Such, very likely, may have been the king's motive in
+granting the Massachusetts charter two days after turning his Parliament
+out of doors. But the events of the last half-dozen years had come to
+present the case in a new light. The young colony was not languishing.
+It was full of sturdy life; it had wrought mischief to the schemes of
+Gorges; and what was more, it had begun to take unheard-of liberties
+with things ecclesiastical and political. Its example was getting to be
+a dangerous one. It was evidently worth while to put a strong curb upon
+Massachusetts. Any promise made to his subjects Charles regarded as
+a promise made under duress which he was quite justified in breaking
+whenever it suited his purpose to do so. Enemies of Massachusetts were
+busy in England. Schismatics from Salem and revellers from Merrymount
+were ready with their tales of woe, and now Gorges and Mason were
+vigorously pressing their territorial claims. They bargained with
+the king. In February, 1635, the moribund Council for New England
+surrendered its charter and all its corporate rights in America, on
+condition that the king should disregard all the various grants by which
+these rights had from time to time been alienated, and should divide
+up the territory of New England in severalty among the members of the
+Council. In pursuance of this scheme Gorges and Mason, together with
+half a dozen noblemen, were allowed to parcel out New England among
+themselves as they should see fit. In this way the influence of the
+Marquis of Hamilton, with the Earls of Arundel, Surrey, Carlisle, and
+Stirling, might be actively enlisted against the Massachusetts Company.
+A writ of _quo warranto_ was brought against it; and it was proposed to
+send Sir Ferdinando to govern New England with viceregal powers like
+those afterward exercised by Andros.
+
+For a moment the danger seemed alarming; but, as Winthrop says, "the
+Lord frustrated their design." It was noted as a special providence that
+the ship in which Gorges was to sail was hardly off the stocks when it
+fell to pieces. Then the most indefatigable enemy of the colony, John
+Mason, suddenly died. The king issued his famous writ of ship-money and
+set all England by the ears; and, to crown all, the attempt to read the
+Episcopal liturgy at St. Giles's church in Edinburgh led straight to
+the Solemn League and Covenant. Amid the first mutterings of the Great
+Rebellion the proceedings against Massachusetts were dropped, and the
+unheeded colony went on thriving in its independent course. Possibly too
+some locks at Whitehall may have been turned with golden keys, [9] for
+the company was rich, and the king was ever open to such arguments. But
+when the news of his evil designs had first reached Boston the people of
+the infant colony showed no readiness to yield to intimidation. In their
+measures there was a decided smack of what was to be realized a hundred
+and forty years later. Orders were immediately issued for fortifying
+Castle Island in the harbour and the heights at Charlestown and
+Dorchester. Militia companies were put in training, and a beacon was
+set up on the highest hill in Boston, to give prompt notice to all the
+surrounding country of any approaching enemy.
+
+While the ill will of the home government thus kept the colonists in a
+state of alarm, there were causes of strife at work at their very doors,
+of which they were fain to rid themselves as soon as possible. Among all
+the Puritans who came to New England there is no more interesting figure
+than the learned, quick-witted pugnacious Welshman, Roger Williams. He
+was over-fond of logical subtleties and delighted in controversy. There
+was scarcely any subject about which he did not wrangle, from the
+sinfulness of persecution to the propriety of women wearing veils in
+church. Yet, with all this love of controversy, there has perhaps
+never lived a more gentle and kindly soul. Within five years from the
+settlement of Massachusetts this young preacher had announced the true
+principles of religious liberty with a clearness of insight quite
+remarkable in that age. Roger Williams had been aided in securing an
+education by the great lawyer Sir Edward Coke, and had lately taken his
+degree at Pembroke College, Cambridge; but the boldness with which he
+declared his opinions had aroused the hostility of Laud, and in 1631 he
+had come over to Plymouth, whence he removed two years later to Salem,
+and became pastor of the church there. The views of Williams, if
+logically carried out, involved the entire separation of church from
+state, the equal protection of all forms of religious faith, the repeal
+of all laws compelling attendance on public worship, the abolition of
+tithes and of all forced contributions to the support of religion. Such
+views are to-day quite generally adopted by the more civilized portions
+of the Protestant world; but it is needless to say that they were not
+the views of the seventeenth century, in Massachusetts or elsewhere. For
+declaring such opinions as these on the continent of Europe, anywhere
+except in Holland, a man like Williams would in that age have run great
+risk of being burned at the stake. In England, under the energetic
+misgovernment of Laud, he would very likely have had to stand in the
+pillory with his ears cropped, or perhaps, like Bunyan and Baxter, would
+have been sent to jail. In Massachusetts such views were naturally
+enough regarded as anarchical, but in Williams's case they were further
+complicated by grave political imprudence. He wrote a pamphlet in which
+he denied the right of the colonists to the lands which they held in New
+England under the king's grant. He held that the soil belonged to the
+Indians, that the settlers could only obtain a valid title to it by
+purchase from them, and that the acceptance of a patent from a mere
+intruder, like the king, was a sin requiring public repentance. This
+doctrine was sure to be regarded in England as an attack upon the king's
+supremacy over Massachusetts, and at the same time an incident occurred
+in Salem which made it all the more unfortunate. The royal colours under
+which the little companies of militia marched were emblazoned with the
+red cross of St. George. The uncompromising Endicott loathed this emblem
+as tainted with Popery, and one day he publicly defaced the flag of the
+Salem company by cutting out the cross. The enemies of Massachusetts
+misinterpreted this act as a defiance aimed at the royal authority, and
+they attributed it to the teachings of Williams. In view of the king's
+unfriendliness these were dangerous proceedings. Endicott was summoned
+before the General Court at Boston, where he was publicly reprimanded
+and declared incapable of holding office for a year. A few months
+afterward, in January, 1636, Williams was ordered by the General Court
+to come to Boston and embark in a ship that was about to set sail for
+England. But he escaped into the forest, and made his way through the
+snow to the wigwam of Massasoit. He was a rare linguist, and had learned
+to talk fluently in the language of the Indians, and now he passed the
+winter in trying to instill into their ferocious hearts something of the
+gentleness of Christianity. In the spring he was privately notified by
+Winthrop that if he were to steer his course to Narragansett bay he
+would be secure from molestation; and such was the beginning of the
+settlement of Providence. [Sidenote: From religious dissensions; Roger
+Williams]
+
+Shortly before the departure of Williams, there came to Boston one of
+the greatest Puritan statesmen of that heroic age, the younger Henry
+Vane. It is pleasant to remember that the man and Anne who did so much
+to overthrow the tyranny of Strafford, who brought the military strength
+of Scotland to the aid of the hard-pressed Parliament, who administered
+the navy with which Blake won his astonishing victories, who dared even
+withstand Cromwell at the height of his power when his measures became
+too violent,--it is pleasant to remember that this admirable man was
+once the chief magistrate of an American commonwealth. It is pleasant
+for a Harvard man to remember that as such he presided over the assembly
+that founded our first university. Thorough republican and enthusiastic
+lover of liberty, he was spiritually akin to Jefferson and to Samuel
+Adams. Like Williams he was a friend to toleration, and like Williams
+he found Massachusetts an uncomfortable home. In 1636 he was only
+twenty-four years of age, "young in years," and perhaps not yet "in
+sage counsel old." He was chosen governor for that year, and his
+administration was stormy. Among those persons who had followed Mr.
+Cotton from Lincolnshire was Mrs. Anne Hutchinson, a very bright and
+capable lady, if perhaps somewhat impulsive and indiscreet. She had
+brought over with her, says Winthrop, "two dangerous errors: first, that
+the person of the Holy Ghost dwells in a justified person; second, that
+no sanctification can help to evidence to us our justification." Into
+the merits of such abstruse doctrines it is not necessary for the
+historian to enter. One can hardly repress a smile as one reflects
+how early in the history of Boston some of its characteristic social
+features were developed. It is curious to read of lectures there in
+1636, lectures by a lady, and transcendentalist lectures withal! Never
+did lectures in Boston arouse greater excitement than Mrs. Hutchinson's.
+Many of her hearers forsook the teachings of the regular ministers, to
+follow her. [Sidenote: Henry Vane and Anne Hutchinson]
+
+She was very effectively supported by her brother-in-law, Mr.
+Wheelwright, an eloquent preacher, and for a while she seemed to be
+carrying everything before her. She won her old minister Mr. Cotton, she
+won the stout soldier Captain Underhill, she won Governor Vane himself;
+while she incurred the deadly hatred of such men as Dudley and Cotton's
+associate John Wilson. The church at Boston was divided into two hostile
+camps. The sensible Winthrop marvelled at hearing men distinguished "by
+being under a covenant of grace or a covenant of works, as in other
+countries between Protestants and Papists," and he ventured to doubt
+whether any man could really tell what the difference was. The
+theological strife went on until it threatened to breed civil
+disaffection among the followers of Mrs. Hutchinson. A peculiar
+bitterness was given to the affair, from the fact that she professed to
+be endowed with the spirit of prophecy and taught her partisans that it
+was their duty to follow the biddings of a supernatural light; and there
+was nothing which the orthodox Puritan so steadfastly abhorred as the
+anarchical pretence of living by the aid of a supernatural light. In a
+strong and complex society the teachings of Mrs. Hutchinson would have
+awakened but a languid speculative interest, or perhaps would have
+passed by unheeded. In the simple society of Massachusetts in 1636,
+physically weak and as yet struggling for very existence, the practical
+effect of such teachings may well have been deemed politically
+dangerous. When things came to such a pass that the forces of the colony
+were mustered for an Indian campaign and the men of Boston were ready to
+shirk the service because they suspected their chaplain to be "under a
+covenant of works," it was naturally thought to be high time to put Mrs.
+Hutchinson down. In the spring of 1637 Winthrop was elected governor,
+and in August Vane returned to England. His father had at that moment
+more influence with the king than any other person except Strafford,
+and the young man had indiscreetly hinted at an appeal to the home
+government for the protection of the Antinomians, as Mrs. Hutchinson's
+followers were called. But an appeal from America to England was
+something which Massachusetts would no more tolerate in the days of
+Winthrop than in the days of Hancock and Adams. Soon after Vane's
+departure, Mrs. Hutchinson and her friends were ordered to leave the
+colony. It was doubtless an odious act of persecution, yet of all
+such acts which stain the history of Massachusetts in the seventeenth
+century, it is just the one for which the plea of political necessity
+may really be to some extent accepted.
+
+We now begin to see how the spreading of the New England colonization,
+and the founding of distinct communities, was hastened by these
+differences of opinion on theological questions or on questions
+concerning the relations between church and state. Of Mrs. Hutchinson's
+friends and adherents, some went northward, and founded the towns of
+Exeter and Hampton. Some time before Portsmouth and Dover had been
+settled by followers of Mason and Gorges. In 1641 these towns were added
+to the domain of Massachusetts, and so the matter stood until 1679, when
+we shall see Charles II. marking them off as a separate province, under
+a royal government. Such were the beginnings of New Hampshire. Mrs.
+Hutchinson herself, however, with the rest of her adherents, bought
+the island of Aquedneck from the Indians, and settlements were made at
+Portsmouth and Newport. After a quarter of a century of turbulence,
+these settlements coalesced with Williams's colony at Providence, and
+thus was formed the state of Rhode Island. After her husband's death in
+1642, Mrs. Hutchinson left Aquedneck and settled upon some land to the
+west of Stamford and supposed to be within the territory of the New
+Netherlands. There in the following year she was cruelly murdered by
+Indians, together with nearly all her children and servants, sixteen
+victims in all. One of her descendants was the illustrious Thomas
+Hutchinson, the first great American historian, and last royal governor
+of Massachusetts.
+
+To the dangers arising from the ill-will of the crown, and from these
+theological quarrels, there was added the danger of a general attack by
+the savages. Down to this time, since the landing of the Pilgrims at
+Plymouth, the settlers of New England had been in no way molested by the
+natives. Massasoit's treaty with the Pilgrims was scrupulously observed
+on both sides, and kept the Wampanoags quiet for fifty-four years. The
+somewhat smaller tribe which took its name from the _Massawachusett_, or
+Great Hill, of Milton, kept on friendly terms with the settlers about
+Boston, because these red men coveted the powerful aid of the white
+strangers in case of war with their hereditary foes the Tarratines, who
+dwelt in the Piscataqua country. It was only when the English began
+to leave these coast regions and press into the interior that trouble
+arose. The western shores of Narragansett bay were possessed by
+the numerous and warlike tribe of that name, which held in partial
+subjection the Nyantics near Point Judith. To the west of these, and
+about the Thames river, dwelt the still more formidable Pequots, a tribe
+which for bravery and ferocity asserted a preeminence in New England
+not unlike that which the Iroquois league of the Mohawk valley was fast
+winning over all North America east of the Mississippi. North of the
+Pequots, the squalid villages of the Nipmucks were scattered over the
+beautiful highlands that stretch in long ridges from Quinsigamond to
+Nichewaug, and beyond toward blue Monadnock. Westward, in the lower
+Connecticut valley, lived the Mohegans, a small but valiant tribe, now
+for some time held tributary to their Pequot cousins, and very restive
+under the yoke. The thickly wooded mountain ranges between the
+Connecticut and the Hudson had few human inhabitants. These hundred
+miles of crag and forest were a bulwark none too wide or strong against
+the incursions of the terrible Mohawks, whose name sent a shiver of fear
+throughout savage New England, and whose forbearance the Nipmucks and
+Mohegans were fain to ensure by a yearly payment of blackmail. Each
+summer there came two Mohawk elders, secure in the dread that Iroquois
+prowess had everywhere inspired; and up and down the Connecticut valley
+they seized the tribute of weapons and wampum, and proclaimed the last
+harsh edict issued from the savage council at Onondaga. The scowls that
+greeted their unwelcome visits were doubtless nowhere fiercer than among
+the Mohegans, thus ground down between Mohawk and Pequot as between the
+upper and the nether millstone. [Sidenote: From the Indians: the Pequot
+supremacy]
+
+Among the various points in which civilized man surpasses the savage
+none is more conspicuous than the military brute force which in the
+highest civilization is always latent though comparatively seldom
+exerted. The sudden intrusion of English warfare into the Indian world
+of the seventeenth century may well have seemed to the red men a
+supernatural visitation, like the hurricane or the earthquake. The
+uncompromising vigour with which the founders of Massachusetts carried
+on their work was viewed in some quarters with a dissatisfaction which
+soon thrust the English migration into the very heart of the Indian
+country.
+
+The first movement, however, was directed against the encroachments of
+the New Netherlands. In October, 1634, some men of Plymouth, led by
+William Holmes, sailed up the Connecticut river, and, after bandying
+threats with a party of Dutch who had built a rude fort on the site of
+Hartford, passed on and fortified themselves on the site of Windsor.
+Next year Governor Van Twiller sent a company of seventy men to drive
+away these intruders, but after reconnoitring the situation the Dutchmen
+thought it best not to make an attack. Their little stronghold at
+Hartford remained unmolested by the English, and, in order to secure
+the communication between this advanced outpost and New Amsterdam, Van
+Twiller decided to build another fort at the mouth of the river, but
+this time the English were beforehand. Rumours of Dutch designs may
+have reached the ears of Lord Say and Sele and Lord Brooke--"fanatic
+Brooke," as Scott calls him in "Marmion"--who had obtained from the
+Council for New England a grant of territory on the shores of the Sound.
+These noblemen chose as their agent the younger John Winthrop, son of
+the Massachusetts governor, and this new-comer arrived upon the scene
+just in time to drive away Van Twiller's vessel and build an English
+fort which in honour of his two patrons he called "Say-Brooke."
+
+Had it not been for seeds of discontent already sown in Massachusetts,
+the English hold upon the Connecticut valley might perhaps have been
+for a few years confined to these two military outposts at Windsor and
+Saybrook. But there were people in Massachusetts who did not look with
+favour upon the aristocratic and theocratic features in its polity. The
+provision that none but church-members should vote or hold office was
+by no means unanimously approved. We see it in the course of another
+generation putting altogether too much temporal power into the hands of
+the clergy, and we can trace the growth of the opposition to it until in
+the reign of Charles II. it becomes a dangerous source of weakness to
+Massachusetts. At the outset the opposition seems to have been strongest
+in Dorchester, Newtown, and Watertown. When the Board of Assistants
+undertook to secure for themselves permanency of tenure, together with
+the power of choosing the governor and making the laws, these three
+towns sent deputies to Boston to inspect the charter and see if it
+authorized any such stretch of power. They were foremost in insisting
+that representatives chosen by the towns must have a share in the
+general government. Men who held such opinions were naturally unwilling
+to increase the political weight of the clergy, who, during these early
+disputes and indeed until the downfall of the charter, were inclined to
+take aristocratic views and to sympathize with the Board of Assistants.
+Cotton declared that democracy was no fit government either for church
+or for commonwealth, and the majority of the ministers agreed with
+him. Chief among those who did not was the learned and eloquent Thomas
+Hooker, pastor of the church at Newtown. When Winthrop, in a letter to
+Hooker, defended the restriction of the suffrage on the ground that "the
+best part is always the least, and of that best part the wiser part is
+always the lesser;" Hooker replied that "in matters which concern the
+common good, a general council, chosen by all, to transact businesses
+which concern all, I conceive most suitable to rule and most safe for
+relief of the whole." It is interesting to meet, on the very threshold
+of American history, with such a lucid statement of the strongly
+contrasted views which a hundred and fifty years later were to be
+represented on a national scale by Hamilton and Jefferson. There were
+many in Newtown who took Hooker's view of the matter; and there, as
+also in Watertown and Dorchester, which in 1633 took the initiative in
+framing town governments with selectmen, a strong disposition was shown
+to evade the restrictions upon the suffrage.
+
+While such things were talked about in the summer of 1633 the
+adventurous John Oldham was making his way through the forest and over
+the mountains into the Connecticut valley, and when he returned to
+the coast his glowing accounts set some people to thinking. Two years
+afterward a few pioneers from Dorchester pushed through the wilderness
+as far as the Plymouth men's fort at Windsor, while a party from
+Watertown went farther and came to a halt upon the site of Wethersfield.
+A larger party, bringing cattle and such goods as they could carry,
+set out in the autumn and succeeded in reaching Windsor. Their winter
+supplies were sent around by water to meet them, but early in November
+the ships had barely passed the Saybrook fort when they found the river
+blocked with ice and were obliged to return to Boston. The sufferings of
+the pioneers, thus cut off from the world, were dreadful. Their cattle
+perished, and they were reduced to a diet of acorns and ground-nuts.
+Some seventy of them, walking on the frozen river to Saybrook, were
+so fortunate as to find a crazy little sloop jammed in the ice. They
+succeeded in cutting her adrift, and steered themselves back to Boston.
+Others surmounted greater obstacles in struggling back through the snow
+over the region which the Pullman car now traverses, regardless of
+seasons, in three hours. A few grim heroes, the nameless founders of a
+noble commonwealth, stayed on the spot and defied starvation. In the
+next June, 1636, the Newtown congregation, a hundred or more in number,
+led by their sturdy pastor, and bringing with them 160 head of cattle,
+made the pilgrimage to the Connecticut valley. Women and children took
+part in this pleasant summer journey; Mrs. Hooker, the pastor's wife,
+being too ill to walk, was carried on a litter. Thus, in the memorable
+year in which our great university was born, did Cambridge become, in
+the true Greek sense of a much-abused word, the _metropolis_ or "mother
+town" of Hartford. The migration at once became strong in numbers.
+During the past twelvemonth a score of ships had brought from England
+to Massachusetts more than 3000 souls, and so great an accession made
+further movement easy. Hooker's pilgrims were soon followed by the
+Dorchester and Watertown congregations, and by the next May 800 people
+were living in Windsor, Hartford, and Wethersfield. As we read of these
+movements, not of individuals, but of organic communities, united in
+allegiance to a church and its pastor, and fervid with the instinct
+of self-government, we seem to see Greek history renewed, but with
+centuries of added political training. For one year a board of
+commissioners from Massachusetts governed the new towns, but at the end
+of that time the towns chose representatives and held a General Court at
+Hartford, and thus the separate existence of Connecticut was begun. As
+for Springfield, which was settled about the same time by a party from
+Roxbury, it remained for some years doubtful to which state it belonged.
+At the opening session of the General Court, May 31,1638, Mr. Hooker
+preached a sermon of wonderful power, in which he maintained that "the
+foundation of authority is laid in the free consent of the people,"
+"that the choice of public magistrates belongs unto the people by God's
+own allowance," and that "they who have power to appoint officers and
+magistrates have the right also to set the bounds and limitations of
+the power and place unto which they call them." On the 14th of January,
+1639, all the freemen of the three towns assembled at Hartford and
+adopted a written constitution in which the hand of the great preacher
+is clearly discernible. It is worthy of note that this document contains
+none of the conventional references to a "dread sovereign" or a
+"gracious king," nor the slightest allusion to the British or any other
+government outside of Connecticut itself, nor does it prescribe any
+condition of church-membership for the right of suffrage. It was the
+first written constitution known to history, that created a government,
+[10] and it marked the beginnings of American democracy, of which Thomas
+Hooker deserves more than any other man to be called the father. The
+government of the United States today is in lineal descent more nearly
+related to that of Connecticut than to that of any of the other thirteen
+colonies. The most noteworthy feature of the Connecticut republic was
+that it was a federation of independent towns, and that all attributes
+of sovereignty not expressly granted to the General Court remained,
+as of original right, in the towns. Moreover, while the governor and
+council were chosen by a majority vote of the whole people, and by a
+suffrage that was almost universal, there was for each township an
+equality of representation in the assembly. [11] This little federal
+republic was allowed to develop peacefully and normally; its
+constitution was not violently wrenched out of shape like that of
+Massachusetts at the end of the seventeenth century. It silently grew
+till it became the strongest political structure on the continent, as
+was illustrated in the remarkable military energy and the unshaken
+financial credit of Connecticut during the Revolutionary War; and in the
+chief crisis of the Federal Convention of 1787 Connecticut, with her
+compromise which secured equal state representation in one branch of the
+national government and popular representation in the other, played the
+controlling part. [Sidenote: Connecticut Pioneers] [Sidenote: The first
+written constitution]
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE NEW ENGLAND CONFEDERACY.
+
+
+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. [12] The 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. [14] But 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, [15] sending 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. [16] Roger 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." [18] The 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. [19] It 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. [20] The
+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] [22]
+This 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." [23] The 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]
+
+It was immediately preceded and followed by the deaths of the two
+foremost men in that commonwealth. John Winthrop died in 1649 and John
+Cotton in 1652. Both were men of extraordinary power. Of Winthrop it is
+enough to say that under his skilful guidance Massachusetts had been
+able to pursue the daring policy which had characterized the first
+twenty years of her history, and which in weaker hands would almost
+surely have ended in disaster. Of Cotton it may be said that he was the
+most eminent among a group of clergymen who for learning and dialectical
+skill have seldom been surpassed. Neither Winthrop nor Cotton approved
+of toleration upon principle. Cotton, in his elaborate controversy
+with Roger Williams, frankly asserted that persecution is not wrong in
+itself; it is wicked for falsehood to persecute truth, but it is the
+sacred duty of truth to persecute falsehood. This was the theologian's
+view. Winthrop's was that of a man of affairs. They had come to New
+England, he said, in order to make a society after their own model;
+all who agreed with them might come and join that society; those who
+disagreed with them might go elsewhere; there was room enough on the
+American continent. But while neither Winthrop nor Cotton understood the
+principle of religious liberty, at the same time neither of them had the
+temperament which persecutes. Both were men of genial disposition, sound
+common-sense, and exquisite tact. Under their guidance no such
+tragedy would have been possible as that which was about to leave its
+ineffaceable stain upon the annals of Massachusetts.
+
+It was most unfortunate that at this moment the places of these two men
+should have been taken by two as arrant fanatics as ever drew breath.
+For thirteen out of the fifteen years following Winthrop's death, the
+governor of Massachusetts was John Endicott, a sturdy pioneer, whose
+services to the colony had been great. He was honest and conscientious,
+but passionate, domineering, and very deficient in tact. At the same
+time Cotton's successor in position and influence was John Norton, a man
+of pungent wit, unyielding temper, and melancholy mood. He was possessed
+by a morbid fear of Satan, whose hirelings he thought were walking
+up and down over the earth in the visible semblance of heretics and
+schismatics. Under such leaders the bigotry latent in the Puritan
+commonwealth might easily break out in acts of deadly persecution.
+[Sidenote: Endicott and Norton take the lead] [Sidenote: The Quakers and
+their views]
+
+The occasion was not long in coming. Already the preaching of George Fox
+had borne fruit, and the noble sect of Quakers was an object of scorn
+and loathing to all such as had not gone so far as they toward learning
+the true lesson of Protestantism. Of all Protestant sects the Quakers
+went furthest in stripping off from Christianity its non-essential
+features of doctrine and ceremonial. Their ideal was not a theocracy
+but a separation between church and state. They would abolish all
+distinction between clergy and laity, and could not be coaxed or bullied
+into paying tithes. They also refused to render military service, or
+to take the oath of allegiance. In these ways they came at once into
+antagonism both with church and with state. In doctrine their chief
+peculiarity was the assertion of an "Inward Light" by which every
+individual is to be guided in his conduct of life. They did not believe
+that men ceased to be divinely inspired when the apostolic ages came
+to an end, but held that at all times and places the human soul may be
+enlightened by direct communion with its Heavenly Father. Such views
+involved the most absolute assertion of the right of private judgment;
+and when it is added that in the exercise of this right many Quakers
+were found to reject the dogmas of original sin and the resurrection of
+the body, to doubt the efficacy of baptism, and to call in question the
+propriety of Christians turning the Lord's Day into a Jewish Sabbath, we
+see that they had in some respects gone far on the road toward modern
+rationalism. It was not to be expected that such opinions should
+be treated by the Puritans in any other spirit than one of extreme
+abhorrence and dread. The doctrine of the "Inward Light," or of private
+inspiration, was something especially hateful to the Puritan. To the
+modern rationalist, looking at things in the dry light of history,
+it may seem that this doctrine was only the Puritan's own appeal to
+individual judgment, stated in different form; but the Puritan could not
+so regard it. To such a fanatic as Norton this inward light was but
+a reflection from the glare of the bottomless pit, this private
+inspiration was the beguiling voice of the Devil. As it led the Quakers
+to strange and novel conclusions, this inward light seemed to array
+itself in hostility to that final court of appeal for all good
+Protestants, the sacred text of the Bible. The Quakers were accordingly
+regarded as infidels who sought to deprive Protestantism of its only
+firm support. They were wrongly accused of blasphemy in their treatment
+of the Scriptures. Cotton Mather says that the Quakers were in the habit
+of alluding to the Bible as the Word of the Devil. Such charges, from
+passionate and uncritical enemies, are worthless except as they serve to
+explain the bitter prejudice with which the Quakers were regarded. They
+remind one of the silly accusation brought against Wyclif two centuries
+earlier, that he taught his disciples that God ought to obey the Devil;
+[24] and they are not altogether unlike the assumptions of some modern
+theologians who take it for granted that any writer who accepts the
+Darwinian theory must be a materialist. [Sidenote: Endicott and Norton
+take the lead] [Sidenote: The Quakers and their views]
+
+But worthless as Mather's statements are, in describing the views of
+the Quakers, they are valuable as indicating the temper in which these
+disturbers of the Puritan theocracy were regarded. In accusing them of
+rejecting the Bible and making a law unto themselves, Mather simply put
+on record a general belief which he shared. Nor can it be doubted that
+the demeanour of the Quaker enthusiasts was sometimes such as to seem
+to warrant the belief that their anarchical doctrines entailed, as a
+natural consequence, disorderly and disreputable conduct. In those
+days all manifestations of dissent were apt to be violent, and the
+persecution which they encountered was likely to call forth strange and
+unseemly vagaries. When we remember how the Quakers, in their scorn of
+earthly magistrates and princes, would hoot at the governor as he
+walked up the street; how they used to rush into church on Sundays and
+interrupt the sermon with untimely remarks; how Thomas Newhouse once
+came into the Old South Meeting-House with a glass bottle in each hand,
+and, holding them up before the astonished congregation, knocked them
+together and smashed them, with the remark, "Thus will the Lord break
+you all in pieces"; how Lydia Wardwell and Deborah Wilson ran about the
+streets in the primitive costume of Eve before the fall, and called
+their conduct "testifying before the Lord"; we can hardly wonder that
+people should have been reminded of the wretched scenes enacted at
+Munster by the Anabaptists of the preceding century. [Sidenote: Violent
+manifestations of dissent]
+
+Such incidents, however, do not afford the slightest excuse for the
+cruel treatment which the Quakers received in Boston, nor do they go
+far toward explaining it. Persecution began immediately, before the
+new-comers had a chance to behave themselves well or ill. Their mere
+coming to Boston was taken as an act of invasion. It was indeed an
+attack upon the Puritan theocratic idea. Of all the sectaries of that
+age of sects, the Quakers were the most aggressive. There were at one
+time more than four thousand of them in English jails; yet when any of
+them left England, it was less to escape persecution than to preach
+their doctrines far and wide over the earth. Their missionaries found
+their way to Paris, to Vienna; even to Rome, where they testified under
+the very roof of the Vatican. In this dauntless spirit they came to New
+England to convert its inhabitants, or at any rate to establish the
+principle that in whatever community it might please them to stay, there
+they would stay in spite of judge or hangman. At first they came to
+Barbadoes, whence two of their number, Anne Austin and Mary Fisher,
+sailed for Boston. When they landed, on a May morning in 1656, Endicott
+happened to be away from Boston, but the deputy-governor, Richard
+Bellingham, was equal to the occasion. He arrested the two women and
+locked them up in jail, where, for fear they might proclaim their
+heresies to the crowd gathered outside, the windows were boarded up.
+There was no law as yet enacted against Quakers, but a council summoned
+for the occasion pronounced their doctrines blasphemous and devilish.
+The books which the poor women had with them were seized and publicly
+burned, and the women themselves were kept in prison half-starved for
+five weeks until the ship they had come in was ready to return to
+Barbadoes. Soon after their departure Endicott came home. He found fault
+with Bellingham's conduct as too gentle; if he had been there he would
+have had the hussies flogged. [Sidenote: Anne Austin and Mary Fisher]
+
+Five years afterward Mary Fisher went to Adrianople and tried to convert
+the Grand Turk, who treated her with grave courtesy and allowed her to
+prophesy unmolested. This is one of the numerous incidents that, on a
+superficial view of history, might be cited in support of the opinion
+that there has been on the whole more tolerance in the Mussulman than in
+the Christian world. Rightly interpreted, however, the fact has no such
+implication. In Massachusetts the preaching of Quaker doctrines might
+(and did) lead to a revolution; in Turkey it was as harmless as the
+barking of dogs. Governor Endicott was afraid of Mary Fisher; Mahomet
+III. was not.
+
+No sooner had the two women been shipped from Boston than eight other
+Quakers arrived from London. They were at once arrested. While they were
+lying in jail the Federal Commissioners, then in session at Plymouth,
+recommended that laws be forthwith enacted to keep these dreaded
+heretics out of the land. Next year they stooped so far as to seek the
+aid of Rhode Island, the colony which they had refused to admit into
+their confederacy. "They sent a letter to the authorities of that
+colony, signing themselves their loving friends and neighbours, and
+beseeching them to preserve the whole body of colonies against 'such a
+pest' by banishing and excluding all Quakers, a measure to which 'the
+rule of charity did oblige them.'" Roger Williams was then president of
+Rhode Island, and in full accord with his noble spirit was the reply of
+the assembly. "We have no law amongst us whereby to punish any for only
+declaring by words their minds and understandings concerning the things
+and ways of God as to salvation and our eternal condition." As for these
+Quakers we find that where they are "most of all suffered to declare
+themselves freely and only opposed by arguments in discourse, there
+they least of all desire to come." Any breach of the civil law shall be
+punished, but the "freedom of different consciences shall be respected."
+This reply enraged the confederated colonies, and Massachusetts, as the
+strongest and most overbearing, threatened to cut off the trade of
+Rhode Island, which forthwith appealed to Cromwell for protection. The
+language of the appeal is as touching as its broad Christian spirit is
+grand. It recognizes that by stopping trade the men of Massachusetts
+will injure themselves, yet, it goes on to say, "for the safeguard of
+their religion they may seem to neglect themselves in that respect; for
+what will not men do for their God?" But whatever fortune may befall,
+"let us not be compelled to exercise any civil power over men's
+consciences." [25] [Sidenote: Noble conduct of Rhode Island]
+
+There could never, of course, be a doubt as to who drew up this state
+paper. During his last visit to England, three years before, Roger
+Williams had spent several weeks at Sir Harry Vane's country house in
+Lincolnshire, and he had also been intimately associated with Cromwell
+and Milton. The views of these great men were the most advanced of
+that age. They were coming to understand the true principle upon which
+toleration should be based. (See my Excursions of an Evolutionist, pp.
+247, 289-293.) Vane had said in Parliament, "Why should the labours of
+any be suppressed, if sober, though never so different? We now profess
+to seek God, we desire to see light!" [Sidenote: Roger Williams appeals
+to Cromwell]
+
+This Williams called a "heavenly speech." The sentiment it expressed was
+in accordance with the practical policy of Cromwell, and in the appeal
+of the president of Rhode Island to the Lord Protector one hears the
+tone with which friend speaks to friend.
+
+In thus protecting the Quakers, Williams never for a moment concealed
+his antipathy to their doctrines. The author of "George Fox digged out
+of his Burrowes," the sturdy controversialist who in his seventy-third
+year rowed himself in a boat the whole length of Narragansett bay to
+engage in a theological tournament against three Quaker champions, was
+animated by nothing less than the broadest liberalism in his bold reply
+to the Federal Commissioners in 1657. The event showed that under his
+guidance the policy of Rhode Island was not only honourable but wise.
+The four confederated colonies all proceeded to pass laws banishing
+Quakers and making it a penal offence for shipmasters to bring them to
+New England. These laws differed in severity. Those of Connecticut, in
+which we may trace the influence of the younger John Winthrop, were the
+mildest; those of Massachusetts were the most severe, and as Quakers
+kept coming all the more in spite of them, they grew harsher and
+harsher. At first the Quaker who persisted in returning was to be
+flogged and imprisoned at hard labour, next his ears were to be cut off,
+and for a third offence his tongue was to be bored with a hot iron.
+At length in 1658, the Federal Commissioners, sitting at Boston with
+Endicott as chairman, recommended capital punishment. It must be borne
+in mind that the general reluctance toward prescribing or inflicting the
+death penalty was much weaker then than now. On the statute-books there
+were not less than fifteen capital crimes, including such offences as
+idolatry, witchcraft, blasphemy, marriage within the Levitical degrees,
+"presumptuous sabbath-breaking," and cursing or smiting one's parents.
+[26] The infliction of the penalty, however, lay practically very much
+within the discretion of the court, and was generally avoided except in
+cases of murder or other heinous felony. In some of these ecclesiastical
+offences the statute seems to have served the purpose of a threat, and
+was therefore perhaps the more easily enacted. Yet none of the colonies
+except Massachusetts now adopted the suggestion of the Federal
+Commissioners and threatened the Quakers with death. [Sidenote: Laws
+passed against the Quakers]
+
+In Massachusetts the opposition was very strong indeed, and its
+character shows how wide the divergence in sentiment had already become
+between the upper stratum of society and the people in general. This
+divergence was one result of the excessive weight given to the clergy by
+the restriction of the suffrage to church members. One might almost say
+that it was not the people of Massachusetts, after all, that shed
+the blood of the Quakers; it was Endicott and the clergy. The bill
+establishing death as the penalty for returning after banishment was
+passed in the upper house without serious difficulty; but in the lower
+house it was at first defeated. Of the twenty-six deputies fifteen were
+opposed to it, but one of these fell sick and two were intimidated,
+so that finally the infamous measure was passed by a vote of thirteen
+against twelve. Probably it would not have passed but for a hopeful
+feeling that an occasion for putting it into execution would not
+be likely to arise. It was hoped that the mere threat would prove
+effective. Endicott begged the Quakers to keep away, saying earnestly
+that he did not desire their death; but the more resolute spirits
+were not deterred by fear of the gallows. In September, 1659, William
+Robinson, Marmaduke Stevenson, and Mary Dyer, who had come to Boston
+expressly to defy the cruel law, were banished. Mrs. Dyer was a lady
+of good family, wife of the secretary of Rhode Island. She had been an
+intimate friend of Mrs. Hutchinson. While she went home to her husband,
+Stevenson and Robinson went only to Salem and then faced about and came
+back to Boston. Mrs. Dyer also returned. All three felt themselves
+under divine command to resist and defy the persecutors. On the 27th of
+October they were led to the gallows on Boston Common, under escort of
+a hundred soldiers. Many people had begun to cry shame on such
+proceedings, and it was thought necessary to take precautions against a
+tumult. The victims tried to address the crowd, but their voices were
+drowned by the beating of drums. While the Rev. John Wilson railed and
+scoffed at them from the foot of the gallows the two brave men were
+hanged. The halter had been placed upon Mrs. Dyer when her son, who
+had come in all haste from Rhode Island, obtained her reprieve on
+his promise to take her away. The bodies of the two men were denied
+Christian burial and thrown uncovered into a pit. All the efforts of
+husband and son were unable to keep Mrs. Dyer at home. In the following
+spring she returned to Boston and on the first day of June was again
+taken to the gallows. At the last moment she was offered freedom if she
+would only promise to go away and stay, but she refused. "In obedience
+to the will of the Lord I came," said she, "and in his will I abide
+faithful unto death." And so she died. [Sidenote: Executions on Boston
+Common] [Sidenote: Wenlock Christison's defiance and victory]
+
+Public sentiment in Boston was now turning so strongly against the
+magistrates that they began to weaken in their purpose. But there
+was one more victim. In November, 1660, William Leddra returned from
+banishment. The case was clear enough, but he was kept in prison four
+months and every effort was made to induce him to promise to leave the
+colony, but in vain. In the following March he too was put to death. A
+few days before the execution, as Leddra was being questioned in court,
+a memorable scene occurred. Wenlock Christison was one of those who had
+been banished under penalty of death. On his return he made straight for
+the town-house, strode into the court-room, and with uplifted finger
+addressed the judges in words of authority. "I am come here to warn
+you," said he, "that ye shed no more innocent blood." He was instantly
+seized and dragged off to jail. After three months he was brought to
+trial before the Court of Assistants. The magistrates debated for more
+than a fortnight as to what should be done. The air was thick with
+mutterings of insurrection, and they had lost all heart for their
+dreadful work. Not so the savage old man who presided, frowning gloomily
+under his black skull cap. Losing his patience at last, Endicott smote
+the table with fury, upbraided the judges for their weakness, and
+declared himself so disgusted that he was ready to go back to England.
+[27] "You that will not consent, record it," he shouted, as the question
+was again put to vote, "I thank God I am not afraid to give judgment."
+Christison was condemned to death, but the sentence was never executed.
+In the interval the legislature assembled, and the law was modified. The
+martyrs had not died in vain. Their cause was victorious. A revolution
+had been effected. The Puritan ideal of a commonwealth composed of a
+united body of believers was broken down, never again to be restored.
+The principle had been admitted that the heretic might come to
+Massachusetts and stay there.
+
+It was not in a moment, however, that these results were fully realized.
+For some years longer Quakers were fined, imprisoned, and now and then
+tied to the cart's tail and whipped from one town to another. But these
+acts of persecution came to be more and more discountenanced by public
+opinion until at length they ceased.
+
+It was on the 25th of May, 1660, just one week before the martyrdom of
+Mary Dyer, that Charles II. returned to England to occupy his father's
+throne. One of the first papers laid before him was a memorial in behalf
+of the oppressed Quakers in New England. In the course of the following
+year he sent a letter to Endicott and the other New England governors,
+ordering them to suspend proceedings against the Quakers, and if any
+were then in prison, to send them to England for trial. Christison's
+victory had already been won, but the "King's Missive" was now partially
+obeyed by the release of all prisoners. As for sending anybody to
+England for trial, that was something that no New England government
+could ever be made to allow.
+
+Charles's defence of the Quakers was due, neither to liberality
+of disposition nor to any sympathy with them, but rather to his
+inclinations toward Romanism. Unlike in other respects, Quakers and
+Catholics were alike in this, that they were the only sects which the
+Protestant world in general agreed in excluding from toleration. Charles
+wished to secure toleration for Catholics, and he could not prudently
+take steps toward this end without pursuing a policy broad enough to
+diminish persecution in other directions, and from these circumstances
+the Quakers profited. At times there was something almost like a
+political alliance between Quaker and Catholic, as instanced in the
+relations between William Penn and Charles's brother, the Duke of York.
+[Sidenote: The "King's Missive"] [Sidenote: Why Charles II. interfered
+to protect the Quakers]
+
+Besides all this, Charles had good reason to feel that the governments
+of New England were assuming too many airs of sovereignty. There were
+plenty of people at hand to work upon his mind. The friends of Gorton
+and Child and Vassall were loud with their complaints. Samuel Maverick
+swore that the people of New England were all rebels, and he could prove
+it. The king was assured that the Confederacy was "a war combination,
+made by the four colonies when they had a design to throw off their
+dependence on England, and for that purpose." The enemies of the New
+England people, while dilating upon the rebellious disposition of
+Massachusetts, could also remind the king that for several years that
+colony had been coining and circulating shillings and sixpences with the
+name "Massachusetts" and a tree on one side, and the name "New England"
+with the date on the other. There was no recognition of England upon
+this coinage, which was begun in 1652 and kept up for more than thirty
+years. Such pieces of money used to be called "pine-tree shillings";
+but, so far as looks go, the tree might be anything, and an adroit
+friend of New England once gravely assured the king that it was meant
+for the royal oak in which his majesty hid himself after the battle of
+Worcester!
+
+Against the colony of New Haven the king had a special grudge. Two of
+the regicide judges, who had sat in the tribunal which condemned his
+father, escaped to New England in 1660 and were well received there.
+They were gentlemen of high position. Edward Whalley was a cousin of
+Cromwell and Hampden. He had distinguished himself at Naseby and Dunbar,
+and had risen to the rank of lieutenant-general. He had commanded at
+the capture of Worcester, where it is interesting to observe that the
+royalist commander who surrendered to him was Sir Henry Washington, own
+cousin to the grandfather of George Washington. The other regicide,
+William Goffe, as a major-general in Cromwell's army, had won such
+distinction that there were some who pointed to him as the proper person
+to succeed the Lord Protector on the death of the latter. He had married
+Whalley's daughter. Soon after the arrival of these gentlemen, a royal
+order for their arrest was sent to Boston. If they had been arrested and
+sent back to England, their severed heads would soon have been placed
+over Temple Bar. The king's detectives hotly pursued them through the
+woodland paths of New England, and they would soon have been taken but
+for the aid they got from the people. Many are the stories of their
+hairbreadth escapes. Sometimes they took refuge in a cave on a mountain
+near New Haven, sometimes they hid in friendly cellars; and once, being
+hard put to it, they skulked under a wooden bridge, while their pursuers
+on horseback galloped by overhead. After lurking about New Haven and
+Milford for two or three years, on hearing of the expected arrival
+of Colonel Nichols and his commission, they sought a more secluded
+hiding-place near Hadley, a village lately settled far up the
+Connecticut river, within the jurisdiction of Massachusetts. Here the
+avengers lost the trail, the pursuit was abandoned, and the weary
+regicides were presently forgotten. The people of New Haven had been
+especially zealous in shielding the fugitives. Mr. Davenport had not
+only harboured them in his own house, but on the Sabbath before their
+expected arrival he had preached a very bold sermon, openly advising
+his people to aid and comfort them as far as possible. [28] The colony,
+moreover, did not officially recognize the restoration of Charles II. to
+the throne until that event had been commonly known in New England for
+more than a year. For these reasons the wrath of the king was specially
+roused against New Haven, when circumstances combined to enable him at
+once to punish this disloyal colony and deal a blow at the Confederacy.
+We have seen that in restricting the suffrage to church members New
+Haven had followed the example of Massachusetts, but Connecticut had
+not; and at this time there was warm controversy between the two younger
+colonies as to the wisdom Of such a policy. As yet none of the colonies
+save Massachusetts had obtained a charter, and Connecticut was naturally
+anxious to obtain one. Whether through a complaisant spirit connected
+with this desire, or through mere accident, Connecticut had been prompt
+in acknowledging the restoration of Charles II.; and in August, 1661,
+she dispatched the younger Winthrop to England to apply for a charter.
+Winthrop was a man of winning address and of wide culture. His
+scientific tastes were a passport to the favour of the king at a time
+when the Royal Society was being founded, of which Winthrop himself was
+soon chosen a fellow. In every way the occasion was an auspicious one.
+The king looked upon the rise of the New England Confederacy with
+unfriendly eyes. Massachusetts was as yet the only member of the league
+that was really troublesome; and there seemed to be no easier way to
+weaken her than to raise up a rival power by her side, and extend to it
+such privileges as might awaken her jealousy. All the more would such
+a policy be likely to succeed if accompanied by measures of which
+Massachusetts must necessarily disapprove, and the suppression of
+New Haven would be such a measure. [Sidenote: New Haven annexed to
+Connecticut]
+
+In accordance with these views, a charter of great liberality was at
+once granted to Connecticut, and by the same instrument the colony of
+New Haven was deprived of its separate existence and annexed to its
+stronger neighbour. As if to emphasize the motives which had led to this
+display of royal favour toward Connecticut, an equally liberal charter
+was granted to Rhode Island. In the summer of 1664 Charles II. sent a
+couple of ships-of-war to Boston harbour, with 400 troops under command
+of Colonel Richard Nichols, who had been appointed, along with Samuel
+Maverick and two others as royal commissioners, to look after the
+affairs of the New World. Colonel Nichols took his ships to New
+Amsterdam, and captured that important town. After his return the
+commissioners held meetings at Boston, and for a time the Massachusetts
+charter seemed in danger. But the Puritan magistrates were shrewd, and
+months were frittered away to no purpose. Presently the Dutch made war
+upon England, and the king felt it to be unwise to irritate the people
+of Massachusetts beyond endurance. The turbulent state of English
+politics which followed still further absorbed his attention, and New
+England had another respite of several years. [Sidenote: Founding of
+Newark]
+
+In New Haven a party had grown up which was dissatisfied with its
+extreme theocratic policy and approved of the union with Connecticut.
+Davenport and his followers, the founders of the colony, were beyond
+measure disgusted. They spurned "the Christless rule" of the sister
+colony. Many of them took advantage of the recent conquest of New
+Netherland, and a strong party, led by the Rev. Abraham Pierson, of
+Branford, migrated to the banks of the Passaic in June, 1667, and laid
+the foundations of Newark. For some years to come the theocratic idea
+that had given birth to New Haven continued to live on in New Jersey. As
+for Mr. Davenport, he went to Boston and ended his days there. Cotton
+Mather, writing at a later date, when the theocratic scheme of the early
+settlers had been manifestly outgrown and superseded, says of Davenport:
+"Yet, after all, the Lord gave him to see that in this world a
+Church-State was impossible, whereinto there enters nothing which
+defiles."
+
+The theocratic policy, alike in New Haven and in Massachusetts, broke
+down largely through its inherent weakness. It divided the community,
+and created among the people a party adverse to its arrogance and
+exclusiveness. This state of things facilitated the suppression of
+New Haven by royal edict, and it made possible the victory of Wenlock
+Christison in Massachusetts. We can now see the fundamental explanation
+of the deadly hostility with which Endicott and his party regarded the
+Quakers. The latter aimed a fatal blow at the very root of the idea
+which had brought the Puritans to New England. Once admit these heretics
+as citizens, or even as tolerated sojourners, and there was an end of
+the theocratic state consisting of a united body of believers. It was a
+life-and-death struggle, in which no quarter was given; and the Quakers,
+aided by popular discontent with the theocracy, even more than by the
+intervention of the crown, won a decisive victory.
+
+As the work of planting New England took place chiefly in the eleven
+years 1629-1640, during which Charles I. contrived to reign without a
+parliament, so the prosperous period of the New England Confederacy,
+1643-1664, covers the time of the Civil War and the Commonwealth, and
+just laps on to the reign of Charles II. By the summary extinction of
+the separate existence of one of its members for the benefit of another,
+its vigour was sadly impaired. But its constitution was revised so as
+to make it a league of three states instead of four; and the Federal
+Commissioners kept on holding their meetings, though less frequently,
+until the revocation of the Massachusetts charter in 1684. During
+this period a great Indian war occurred, in the course of which this
+concentration of the military strength of New England, imperfect as it
+was, proved itself very useful. In the history of New England, from the
+restoration of the Stuarts until their final expulsion, the two most
+important facts are the military struggle of the newly founded states
+with the Indians, and their constitutional struggle against the British
+government. The troubles and dangers of 1636 were renewed on a much more
+formidable scale, but the strength of the people had waxed greatly in
+the mean time, and the new perils were boldly overcome or skilfully
+warded off; not, however, until the constitution of Massachusetts had
+been violently wrenched out of shape in the struggle, and seeds of
+conflict sown which in the following century were to bear fruit in the
+American Revolution. [Sidenote: Breaking down of the theocratic policy]
+[Sidenote: Weakening of the Confederacy]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+KING PHILIP'S WAR.
+
+
+For eight-and-thirty years after the destruction of the Pequots, the
+intercourse between the English and the Indians was to all outward
+appearance friendly. The policy pursued by the settlers was in the
+main well considered. While they had shown that they could strike with
+terrible force when blows were needed, their treatment of the natives in
+time of peace seems to have been generally just and kind. Except in the
+single case of the conquered Pequot territory, they scrupulously paid
+for every rood of ground on which they settled, and so far as possible
+they extended to the Indians the protection of the law. On these points
+we have the explicit testimony of Josiah Winslow, governor of Plymouth,
+in his report to the Federal Commissioners in May, 1676; and what
+he says about Plymouth seems to have been equally true of the other
+colonies. Says Winslow, "I think I can clearly say that before these
+present troubles broke out, the English did not possess one foot of land
+in this colony but what was fairly obtained by honest purchase of the
+Indian proprietors. Nay, because some of our people are of a covetous
+disposition, and the Indians are in their straits easily prevailed with
+to part with their lands, we first made a law that none should purchase
+or receive of gift any land of the Indians without the knowledge and
+allowance of our Court .... And if at any time they have brought
+complaints before us, they have had justice impartial and speedy, so
+that our own people have frequently complained that we erred on the
+other hand in showing them overmuch favour." The general laws of
+Massachusetts and Connecticut as well as of Plymouth bear out what
+Winslow says, and show us that as a matter of policy the colonial
+governments were fully sensible of the importance of avoiding all
+occasions for quarrel with their savage neighbours. [Sidenote: Puritans
+and Indians]
+
+There can, moreover, be little doubt that the material comfort of the
+Indians was for a time considerably improved by their dealings with the
+white men. Hitherto their want of foresight and thrift had been wont to
+involve them during the long winters in a dreadful struggle with famine.
+Now the settlers were ready to pay liberally for the skin of every
+fur-covered animal the red men could catch; and where the trade thus
+arising did not suffice to keep off famine, instances of generous
+charity were frequent. The Algonquin tribes of New England lived chiefly
+by hunting, but partly by agriculture. They raised beans and corn, and
+succotash was a dish which they contributed to the white man's table.
+They could now raise or buy English vegetables, while from dogs and
+horses, pigs and poultry, oxen and sheep, little as they could avail
+themselves of such useful animals, they nevertheless derived some
+benefit. [29] Better blankets and better knives were brought within
+their reach; and in spite of all the colonial governments could do to
+prevent it, they were to some extent enabled to supply themselves with
+muskets and rum. [Sidenote: Trade with the Indians]
+
+Besides all this trade, which, except in the article of liquor, tended
+to improve the condition of the native tribes, there was on the part of
+the earlier settlers an earnest and diligent effort to convert them
+to Christianity and give them the rudiments of a civilized education.
+Missionary work was begun in 1643 by Thomas Mayhew on the islands of
+Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard. The savages at first declared they were
+not so silly as to barter thirty-seven tutelar deities for one, but
+after much preaching and many pow-wows Mayhew succeeded in persuading
+them that the Deity of the white man was mightier than all their
+_manitous._ Whether they ever got much farther than this toward a
+comprehension of the white man's religion may be doubted; but they were
+prevailed upon to let their children learn to read and write, and even
+to set up little courts, in which justice was administered according to
+some of the simplest rules of English law, and from which there lay an
+appeal to the court of Plymouth. In 1646 Massachusetts enacted that the
+elders of the churches should choose two persons each year to go and
+spread the gospel among the Indians. In 1649 Parliament established the
+Society for propagating the Gospel in New England, and presently from
+voluntary contributions the society was able to dispose of an annual
+income of £2000. Schools were set up in which agriculture was taught as
+well as religion. It was even intended that Indians should go to Harvard
+College, and a building was erected for their accommodation, but as none
+came to occupy it, the college printing-press was presently set to work
+there. One solitary Indian student afterward succeeded in climbing to
+the bachelor's degree,--Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck of the class of 1665. It
+was this one success that was marvellous, not the failure of the scheme,
+which vividly shows how difficult it was for the white man of that day
+to understand the limitations of the red man. [Sidenote: Missionary
+work: Thomas Mayhew]
+
+The greatest measure of success in converting the Indians was attained
+by that famous linguist and preacher, the apostle John Eliot. This
+remarkable man was a graduate of Jesus College, Cambridge. He had come
+to Massachusetts in 1631, and in the following year had been settled as
+teacher in the church at Roxbury of which Thomas Welde was pastor. He
+had been distinguished at the university for philological scholarship
+and for linguistic talent--two things not always found in
+connection--and now during fourteen years he devoted such time as he
+could to acquiring a complete mastery of the Algonquin dialect spoken by
+the Indians of Massachusetts bay. To the modern comparative philologist
+his work is of great value. He published not only an excellent Indian
+grammar, but a complete translation of the Bible into the Massachusetts
+language,--a monument of prodigious labour. It is one of the most
+instructive documents in existence for the student of Algonquin speech,
+though the Massachusetts tribe and its language have long been extinct,
+and there are very few scholars living who can read the book. It has
+become one of the curiosities of literature and at auction sales of
+private libraries commands an extremely high price. Yet out of this rare
+book the American public has somehow or other within the last five
+or six years contrived to pick up a word which we shall very likely
+continue to hear for some time to come. In Eliot's Bible, the word which
+means a great chief--such as Joshua, or Gideon, or Joab--is "mugwump."
+
+
+It was in 1646 that Eliot began his missionary preaching at a small
+Indian village near Watertown. President Dunster, of Harvard College,
+and Mr. Shepard, the minister at Cambridge, felt a warm interest in the
+undertaking. These worthy men seriously believed that the aborigines
+of America were the degenerate descendants of the ten lost tribes of
+Israel, and from this strange backsliding it was hoped that they might
+now be reclaimed. With rare eloquence and skill did Eliot devote himself
+to the difficult work of reaching the Indian's scanty intelligence and
+still scantier moral sense. His ministrations reached from the sands of
+Cape Cod to the rocky hillsides of Brookfield. But he soon found that
+single-handed he could achieve but little over so wide an area, and
+accordingly he adopted the policy of colonizing his converts in village
+communities near the English towns, where they might be sequestered from
+their heathen brethren and subjected to none but Christian influences.
+In these communities he hoped to train up native missionaries who might
+thence go and labour among the wild tribes until the whole lump of
+barbarism should be leavened. In pursuance of this scheme a stockaded
+village was built at Natick in 1651 Under the direction of an English
+carpenter the Indians built log-houses for themselves, and most of them
+adopted the English dress. Their simple government was administered by
+tithing-men, or "rulers of tens," chosen after methods prescribed in the
+book of Exodus. Other such communities were formed in the neighbourhoods
+of Concord and Grafton. By 1674 the number of these "praying Indians,"
+as they were called, was estimated at 4000, of whom about 1500 were in
+Eliot's villages, as many more in Martha's Vineyard, 300 in Nantucket,
+and 700 in the Plymouth colony. There seems to be no doubt that these
+Indians were really benefited both materially and morally by the change
+in their life. In theology it is not likely that they reached any higher
+view than that expressed by the Connecticut sachem Wequash who "seeing
+and beholding the mighty power of God in the English forces, how they
+fell upon the Pequots, ... from that time was convinced and persuaded
+that our God was a most dreadful God;" accordingly, says the author of
+"New England's First Fruits," "he became thoroughly reformed according
+to his light." Matters of outward observance, too, the Indians could
+understand; for we read of one of them rebuking an Englishman "for
+profaning the Lord's Day by felling of a tree." The Indian's notions of
+religion were probably confined within this narrow compass; the notions
+of some people that call themselves civilized perhaps do not extend much
+further. [Sidenote: Villages of Christian Indians]
+
+From such facts as those above cited we may infer that the early
+relations of the Puritan settlers to the Algonquin tribes of New England
+were by no means like the relations between white men and red men in
+recent times on our western plains. During Philip's War, as we shall
+see, the Puritan theory of the situation was entirely changed and our
+forefathers began to act in accordance with the frontiersman's doctrine
+that the good Indians are dead Indians. But down to that time it is
+clear that his intention was to deal honourably and gently with his
+tawny neighbour. We sometimes hear the justice and kindness of the
+Quakers in Pennsylvania alleged as an adequate reason for the success
+with which they kept clear of an Indian war. This explanation, however,
+does not seem to be adequate; it does not appear that, on the whole, the
+Puritans were less just and kind than the Quakers in their treatment of
+the red men. The true explanation is rather to be found in the relations
+between the Indian tribes toward the close of the seventeenth century.
+Early in that century the Pennsylvania region had been in the hands
+of the ferocious and powerful Susquehannocks, but in 1672, after a
+frightful struggle of twenty years, this great tribe was swept from the
+face of the earth by the resistless league of the Five Nations. When
+the Quakers came to Pennsylvania in 1682, the only Indians in that
+neighbourhood were the Delawares, who had just been terribly beaten by
+the Five Nations and forced into a treaty by which they submitted to be
+called "women," and to surrender their tomahawks. Penn's famous treaty
+was made with the Delawares as occupants of the land and also with the
+Iroquois league as overlords. [30] Now the great central fact of early
+American history, so far as the relations between white men and red
+men are concerned, is the unshaken friendship of the Iroquois for the
+English. This was the natural consequence of the deadly hostility
+between the Iroquois and the French which began with Champlain's defeat
+of the Mohawks in 1609. During the seventy-three years which intervened
+between the founding of Pennsylvania and the defeat of Braddock there
+was never a moment when the Delawares could have attacked the Quakers
+without incurring the wrath and vengeance of their overlords the Five
+Nations. This was the reason why Pennsylvania was left so long in quiet.
+No better proof could be desired than the fact that in Pontiac's war,
+after the overthrow of the French and when Indian politics had changed,
+no state suffered so much as Pennsylvania from the horrors of Indian
+warfare. [Sidenote: Why Pennsylvania was so long unmolested by the
+Indians]
+
+In New England at the time of Philip's War, the situation was very
+different from what it was between the Hudson and the Susquehanna. The
+settlers were thrown into immediate relations with several tribes whose
+mutual hostility and rivalry was such that it was simply impossible to
+keep on good terms with all at once. Such complicated questions as that
+which involved the English in responsibility for the fate of Miantonomo
+did not arise in Pennsylvania. Since the destruction of the Pequots we
+have observed the Narragansetts and Mohegans contending for the foremost
+place among New England tribes. Of the two rivals the Mohegans were
+the weaker, and therefore courted the friendship of the formidable
+palefaces. The English had no desire to take part in these barbarous
+feuds, but they could not treat the Mohegans well without incurring the
+hostility of the Narragansetts. For thirty years the feeling of the
+latter tribe toward the English had been very unfriendly and would
+doubtless have vented itself in murder but for their recollection of
+the fate of the Pequots. After the loss of their chief Miantonomo their
+attitude became so sullen and defiant that the Federal Commissioners, in
+order to be in readiness for an outbreak, collected a force of 300 men.
+At the first news of these preparations the Narragansetts, overcome with
+terror, sent a liberal tribute of wampum to Boston, and were fain to
+conclude a treaty in which they promised to behave themselves well in
+the future.
+
+It was impossible that this sort of English protectorate over the native
+tribes, which was an inevitable result of the situation, should be other
+than irksome and irritating to the Indians. They could not but see that
+the white man stood there as master, and even in the utter absence
+of provocation, this fact alone must have made them hate him. It is
+difficult, moreover, for the civilized man and the savage to understand
+each other. As a rule the one does not know what the other is thinking
+about. When Mr. Hamilton Gushing a few years ago took some of his Zuni
+friends into a hotel in Chicago, they marvelled at his entering such a
+mighty palace with so little ceremony, and their wonder was heightened
+at the promptness with which "slaves" came running at his beck and call;
+but all at once, on seeing an American eagle over one of the doorways,
+they felt that the mystery was solved. Evidently this palace was the
+communal dwelling of the Eagle Clan of palefaces, and evidently Mr.
+Gushing was a great sachem of this clan, and as such entitled to lordly
+sway there! The Zunis are not savages, but representatives of a remote
+and primitive phase of what Mr. Morgan calls the middle status of
+barbarism. The gulf between their thinking and that of white men is
+wide because there is a wide gulf between the experience of the two.
+[Sidenote: Difficulty of the situation in New England] [Sidenote: It is
+hard for the savage and the civilized man to understand one another]
+
+This illustration may help us to understand an instance in which the
+Indians of New England must inevitably have misinterpreted the actions
+of the white settlers and read them in the light of their uneasy fears
+and prejudices. I refer to the work of the apostle Eliot. His design in
+founding his villages of Christian Indians was in the highest degree
+benevolent and noble; but the heathen Indians could hardly be expected
+to see anything in it but a cunning scheme for destroying them.
+
+Eliot's converts were for the most part from the Massachusetts tribe,
+the smallest and weakest of all. The Plymouth converts came chiefly
+from the tribe next in weakness, the Pokanokets or Wampanoags. The more
+powerful tribes--Narragansetts, Nipmucks, and Mohegans--furnished very
+few converts. When they saw the white intruders gathering members of the
+weakest tribes into villages of English type, and teaching them strange
+gods while clothing them in strange garments, they probably supposed
+that the pale-faces were simply adopting these Indians into their white
+tribe as a means of increasing their military strength. At any rate,
+such a proceeding would be perfectly intelligible to the savage mind,
+whereas the nature of Eliot's design lay quite beyond its ken. As the
+Indians recovered from their supernatural dread of the English, and
+began to regard them as using human means to accomplish their ends,
+they must of course interpret their conduct in such light as savage
+experience could afford. It is one of the commonest things in the world
+for a savage tribe to absorb weak neighbours by adoption, and thus
+increase its force preparatory to a deadly assault upon other
+neighbours. When Eliot in 1657 preached to the little tribe of Podunks
+near Hartford, and asked them if they were willing to accept of Jesus
+Christ as their saviour, their old men scornfully answered No! they had
+parted with most of their land, but they were not going to become the
+white man's servants. A rebuke administered to Eliot by Uncas in 1674
+has a similar implication. When the apostle was preaching one evening in
+a village over which that sachem claimed jurisdiction, an Indian arose
+and announced himself as a deputy of Uncas. Then he said, "Uncas is not
+well pleased that the English should pass over Mohegan river to call
+_his_ Indians to pray to God." [31]
+
+Thus, no matter how benevolent the white man's intentions, he could not
+fail to be dreaded by the Indians as a powerful and ever encroaching
+enemy.
+
+Even in his efforts to keep the peace and prevent tribes from taking the
+warpath without his permission, he was interfering with the red man's
+cherished pastime of murder and pillage. The appeals to the court at
+Plymouth, the frequent summoning of sachems to Boston, to explain
+their affairs and justify themselves against accusers, must have been
+maddening in their effects upon the Indian; for there is one sound
+instinct which the savage has in common with the most progressive
+races, and that is the love of self-government that resents all outside
+interference. All things considered, it is remarkable that peace should
+have been maintained in New England from 1637 to 1675; and probably
+nothing short of the consuming vengeance wrought upon the Pequots could
+have done it. But with the lapse of time the wholesome feeling of dread
+began to fade away, and as the Indians came to use musket instead of bow
+and arrow, their fear of the English grew less, until at length their
+ferocious temper broke forth in an epidemic of fire and slaughter that
+laid waste the land. [Sidenote: It is remarkable that peace should have
+been so long preserved]
+
+Massasoit, chief sachem of the Wampanoags and steadfast ally of the
+Plymouth colonists, died in 1660, leaving two sons, Wamsutta and
+Metacom, or as the English nicknamed them, Alexander and Philip.
+Alexander succeeded to his father's position of savage dignity and
+influence, but his reign was brief. Rumours came to Plymouth that he was
+plotting mischief, and he was accordingly summoned to appear before the
+General Court of that colony and explain himself. He seems to have gone
+reluctantly, but he succeeded in satisfying the magistrates of his
+innocence of any evil designs. Whether he caught cold at Plymouth or
+drank rum as only Indians can, we do not know. At any rate, on starting
+homeward, before he had got clear of English territory, he was seized by
+a violent fever and died. The savage mind knows nothing of pneumonia or
+delirium tremens. It knows nothing of what we call natural death. To
+the savage all death means murder, for like other men he judges of the
+unknown by the known. In the Indian's experience normal death was by
+tomahawk or firebrand; abnormal death (such as we call natural)
+must come either from poison or from witchcraft. So when the honest
+chronicler Hubbard tells us that Philip suspected the Plymouth people of
+poisoning his brother, we can easily believe him. It was long, however,
+before he was ready to taste the sweets of revenge. He schemed and
+plotted in the dark. In one respect the Indian diplomatist is unlike his
+white brethren; he does not leave state-papers behind him to reward
+the diligence and gratify the curiosity of later generations; and
+accordingly it is hard to tell how far Philip was personally responsible
+for the storm which was presently to burst upon New England. [Sidenote:
+Deaths of Massasoit and Alexander] [Sidenote: Philip's designs]
+
+Whether his scheme was as comprehensive as that of Pontiac in 1763,
+whether or not it amounted to a deliberate combination of all red men
+within reach to exterminate the white men, one can hardly say with
+confidence. The figure of Philip, in the war which bears his name, does
+not stand out so prominently as the figure of Pontiac in the later
+struggle. This may be partly because Pontiac's story has been told by
+such a magician as Mr. Francis Parkman. But it is partly because the
+data are too meagre. In all probability, however, the schemes of
+Sassacus the Pequot, of Philip the Wampanoag, and of Pontiac the Ottawa,
+were substantially the same. That Philip plotted with the Narragansetts
+seems certain, and the early events of the war point clearly to a
+previous understanding with the Nipmucks. The Mohegans, on the other
+hand, gave him no assistance, but remained faithful to their white
+allies.
+
+For thirteen years had Philip been chief sachem of his tribe before the
+crisis came. Rumours of his unfriendly disposition had at intervals
+found their way to the ears of the magistrates at Plymouth, but Philip
+had succeeded in setting himself right before them. In 1670 the rumours
+were renewed, and the Plymouth men felt that it was time to strike, but
+the other colonies held them back, and a meeting was arranged between
+Philip and three Boston men at Taunton in April, 1671. There the crafty
+savage expressed humility and contrition for all past offences, and
+even consented to a treaty in which he promised that his tribe should
+surrender all their fire-arms. On the part of the English this was an
+extremely unwise measure, for while it could not possibly be enforced,
+and while it must have greatly increased the irritation of the Indians,
+it was at the same time interpretable as a symptom of fear. With ominous
+scowls and grunts some seventy muskets were given up, but this was all.
+Through the summer there was much uneasiness, and in September Philip
+was summoned to Plymouth with five of his under-sachems, and solemnly
+warned to keep the peace. The savages again behaved with humility and
+agreed to pay a yearly tribute of five wolves' heads and to do no act of
+war without express permission.
+
+For three years things seemed quiet, until late in 1674 the alarm was
+again sounded. Sausamon, a convert from the Massachusetts tribe, had
+studied a little at Harvard College, and could speak and write English
+with facility. He had at one time been employed by Philip as a sort of
+private secretary or messenger, and at other times had preached and
+taught school among the Indian converts at Natick. Sausamon now came to
+Plymouth and informed Governor Winslow that Philip was certainly engaged
+in a conspiracy that boded no good to the English. Somehow or other
+Philip contrived to find out what Sausamon had said, and presently
+coming to Plymouth loudly asseverated his innocence; but the magistrates
+warned him that if they heard any more of this sort of thing his
+arms would surely be seized. A few days after Philip had gone home,
+Sausamon's hat and gun were seen lying on the frozen surface of
+Assowamsett Pond, near Middleborough, and on cutting through the ice his
+body was found with unmistakable marks of beating and strangling. After
+some months the crime was traced to three Wampanoags, who were forthwith
+arrested, tried by a mixed jury of Indians and white men, found guilty,
+and put to death. On the way to the gallows one of them confessed
+that he had stood by while his two friends had pounded and choked the
+unfortunate Sausamon. [Sidenote: Murder of Sausamon]
+
+More alarming reports now came from Swanzey, a pretty village of some
+forty houses not far from Philip's headquarters at Mount Hope. On Sunday
+June 20, while everybody was at church, a party of Indians had stolen
+into the town and set fire to two houses. Messengers were hurried from
+Plymouth and from Boston, to demand the culprits under penalty of
+instant war. As they approached Swanzey the men from Boston saw a sight
+that filled them with horror. The road was strewn with corpses of men,
+women, and children, scorched, dismembered, and mangled with that
+devilish art of which the American Indian is the most finished master.
+The savages had sacked the village the day before, burning the houses
+and slaying the people. Within three days a small force of colonial
+troops had driven Philip from his position at Mount Hope; but while
+they were doing this a party of savages swooped upon Dartmouth, burning
+thirty houses and committing fearful atrocities. Some of their victims
+were flayed alive, or impaled on sharp stakes, or roasted over slow
+fires. Similar horrors were wrought at Middleborough and Taunton; and
+now the misery spread to Massachusetts, where on the 14th of July the
+town of Mendon was attacked by a party of Nipmucks. [Sidenote: Massacres
+at Swanzey and Dartmouth, June, 1675]
+
+At that time the beautiful highlands between Lancaster and the
+Connecticut river were still an untrodden wilderness. On their southern
+slope Worcester and Brookfield were tiny hamlets of a dozen houses each.
+Up the Connecticut valley a line of little villages, from Springfield
+to Northfield, formed the remotest frontier of the English, and their
+exposed position offered tempting opportunities to the Indians. Governor
+Leverett saw how great the danger would be if the other tribes should
+follow the example set by Philip, and Captain Edward Hutchinson was
+accordingly sent to Brookfield to negotiate with the Nipmucks. This
+officer was eldest son of the unfortunate lady whose preaching in Boston
+nearly forty years before had been the occasion of so much strife. Not
+only his mother, but all save one or two of his brothers and sisters
+--and there were not less than twelve of them--had been murdered by
+Indians on the New Netherland border in 1643; now the same cruel fate
+overtook the gallant captain. The savages agreed to hold a parley and
+appointed a time and place for the purpose, but instead of keeping tryst
+they lay in ambush and slew Hutchinson with eight of his men on their
+way to the conference. [Sidenote: Murder of Captain Hutchinson]
+
+Three days afterward Philip, who had found home too hot for him, arrived
+in the Nipmuck country, and on the night of August 2, took part in a
+fierce assault on Brookfield. Thirty or forty men, with some fifty women
+and children--all the inhabitants of the hamlet--took refuge in a large
+house, where they were besieged by 300 savages whose bullets pierced the
+wooden walls again and again. Arrows tipped with burning rags were
+shot into the air in such wise as to fall upon the roof, but they who
+crouched in the garret were watchful and well supplied with water, while
+from the overhanging windows the volleys of musketry were so brisk and
+steady that the screaming savages below could not get near enough to the
+house to set it on fire. For three days the fight was kept up, while
+every other house in the village was destroyed. By this time the Indians
+had contrived to mount some planks on barrels so as to make a kind of
+rude cart which they loaded with tow and chips. They were just about
+setting it on fire and preparing to push it against the house with long
+poles, when they were suddenly foiled by a heavy shower. That noon the
+gallant Simon Willard, ancestor of two presidents of Harvard College, a
+man who had done so much toward building up Concord and Lancaster that
+he was known as the "founder of towns," was on his way from Lancaster to
+Groton at the head of forty-seven horsemen, when he was overtaken by a
+courier with the news from Brookfield. The distance was thirty miles,
+the road scarcely fit to be called a bridle-path, and Willard's years
+were more than threescore-and-ten; but by an hour after sunset he had
+gallopped into Brookfield and routed the Indians who fled to a swamp ten
+miles distant. [Sidenote: Attack on Brookfield]
+
+The scene is now shifted to the Connecticut valley, where on the 25th of
+August Captain Lothrop defeated the savages at Hatfield. On the 1st of
+September simultaneous attacks were made upon Deerfield and Hadley, and
+among the traditions of the latter place is one of the most interesting
+of the stories of that early time. The inhabitants were all in church
+keeping a fast, when the yells of the Indians resounded. Seizing their
+guns, the men rushed out to meet the foe; but seeing the village green
+swarming on every side with the horrid savages, for a moment their
+courage gave way and a panic was imminent; when all at once a stranger
+of reverend aspect and stately form, with white beard flowing on his
+bosom, appeared among them and took command with an air of authority
+which none could gainsay. He bade them charge on the screeching rabble,
+and after a short sharp skirmish the tawny foe was put to flight. When
+the pursuers came together again, after the excitement of the rout,
+their deliverer was not to be found. In their wonder, as they knew not
+whence he came or whither he had gone, many were heard to say that
+an angel had been sent from heaven for their deliverance. It was the
+regicide William Goffe, who from his hiding-place had seen the savages
+stealing down the hillside, and sallied forth to win yet one more
+victory over the hosts of Midian ere death should come to claim him in
+his woodland retreat. Sir Walter Scott has put this pretty story into
+the mouth of Major Bridgenorth in "Peveril of the Peak," and Cooper has
+made use of it in "The Wept of Wish-ton-wish." Like many other romantic
+stories, it rests upon insufficient authority and its truth has been
+called in question. [32] But there seems to be nothing intrinsically
+improbable in the tradition; and a paramount regard for Goffe's personal
+safety would quite account for the studied silence of contemporary
+writers like Hubbard and Increase Mather. [Sidenote: The mysterious
+stranger of Hadley]
+
+This repulse did not check for a moment the activity of the Indians,
+though for a long time we hear nothing more of Philip. On the 2d
+of September they slew eight men at Northfield and on the 4th they
+surrounded and butchered Captain Beers and most of his company of
+thirty-six marching to the relief of that village. The next day but
+one, as Major Robert Treat came up the road with his 100 Connecticut
+soldiers, they found long poles planted by the wayside bearing the heads
+of their unfortunate comrades. They in turn were assaulted, but beat off
+the enemy, and brought away the people of Northfield. That village was
+abandoned, and presently Deerfield shared its fate and the people were
+crowded into Hadley. Yet worse remained to be seen. A large quantity of
+wheat had been left partly threshed at Deerfield, and on the 11th of
+September eighteen wagons were sent up with teamsters and farmers to
+finish the threshing and bring in the grain. They were escorted by
+Captain Lothrop, with his train-band of ninety picked men, known as the
+"Flower of Essex," perhaps the best drilled company in the colony. The
+threshing was done, the wagons were loaded, and the party made a night
+march southward. At seven in the morning, as they were fording a shallow
+stream in the shade of overarching woods, they were suddenly overwhelmed
+by the deadly fire of 700 ambushed Nipmucks, and only eight of them
+escaped to tell the tale. A "black and fatal" day was this, says the
+chronicler, "the saddest that ever befell New England." To this day the
+memory of the slaughter at Bloody Brook survives, and the visitor to
+South Deerfield may read the inscription over the grave in which Major
+Treat's men next day buried all the victims together. The Indians now
+began to feel their power, and on the 5th of October they attacked
+Springfield and burned thirty houses there. [Sidenote: Ambuscade at
+Bloody Brook, September 12]
+
+Things were becoming desperate. For ten weeks, from September 9 to
+November 19, the Federal Commissioners were in session daily in Boston.
+The most eminent of their number, for ability and character, was the
+younger John Winthrop, who was still governor of Connecticut. Plymouth
+was represented by its governor, Josiah Winslow, with the younger
+William Bradford; Massachusetts by William Stoughton, Simon Bradstreet,
+and Thomas Danforth. These strong men were confronted with a difficult
+problem. From Batten's journal, kept during that disastrous summer, we
+learn the state of feeling of excitement in Boston. The Puritans had
+by no means got rid of that sense of corporate responsibility which
+civilized man has inherited from prehistoric ages, and which has been
+one of the principal causes of religious persecution. This sombre
+feeling has prompted men to believe that to spare the heretic is to
+bring down the wrath of God upon the whole community; and now in Boston
+many people stoutly maintained that God had let loose the savages, with
+firebrand and tomahawk, to punish the people of New England for ceasing
+to persecute "false worshippers and especially idolatrous Quakers."
+Quaker meetings were accordingly forbidden under penalty of fine and
+imprisonment. Some harmless Indians were murdered. At Marblehead two
+were assaulted and killed by a crowd of women. There was a bitter
+feeling toward the Christian Indians, many of whom had joined their
+heathen kinsmen in burning and slaying. Daniel Gookin, superintendent of
+the "praying Indians," a gentleman of the highest character, was told
+that it would not be safe to show himself in the streets of Boston.
+Mrs. Mary Pray, of Providence, wrote a letter recommending the total
+extermination of the red men.
+
+The measures adopted by the Commissioners certainly went far toward
+carrying out Mrs. Pray's suggestion. The demeanour of the Narragansetts
+had become very threatening, and their capacity for mischief exceeded
+that of all the other tribes together. In July the Commissioners had
+made a treaty with them, but in October it became known in Boston
+that they were harbouring some of Philip's hostile Indians. When the
+Commissioners sharply called them to account for this, their sachem
+Canonchet, son of Miantonomo, promised to surrender the fugitives
+within ten days. But the ten days passed and nothing was heard from the
+Narragansetts. The victory of their brethren at Bloody Brook had worked
+upon their minds, so that they no longer thought it worth while to keep
+faith with the white men. They had overcome their timidity and were now
+ready to take part in the work of massacre. [33] The Commissioners soon
+learned of their warlike preparations and lost no time in forestalling
+them. The Narragansetts were fairly warned that if they did not at once
+fulfil their promises they must expect the utmost severities of war. A
+thousand men were enlisted for this service and put under command of
+Governor Winslow, and in December they marched against the enemy. The
+redoubtable fighter and lively chronicler Benjamin Church accompanied
+the expedition.
+
+The Indians had fortified themselves on a piece of rising ground, six
+acres in extent, in the middle of a hideous swamp impassable at most
+seasons but now in some places frozen hard enough to afford a precarious
+footing. They were surrounded by rows of tall palisades which formed a
+wall twelve feet in thickness; and the only approach to the single door
+of this stronghold was over the trunk of a felled tree some two feet in
+diameter and slippery with snow and ice. A stout block-house filled with
+sharpshooters guarded this rude bridge, which was raised some five feet
+from the ground. Within the palisaded fortress perhaps not less than
+2000 warriors, with many women and children, awaited the onset of the
+white men, for here had Canonchet gathered together nearly the whole of
+his available force. This was a military mistake. It was cooping up his
+men for slaughter. They would have been much safer if scattered about in
+the wilderness, and could have given the English much more trouble. But
+readily as they acknowledged the power of the white man, they did not
+yet understand it. One man's courage is not another's, and the Indian
+knew little or nothing of that Gothic fury of self-abandonment which
+rushes straight ahead and snatches victory from the jaws of death. His
+fortress was a strong one, and it was no longer, as in the time of the
+Pequots, a strife in which firearms were pitted against bow and arrow.
+Many of the Narragansetts were equipped with muskets and skilled in
+their use, and under such circumstances victory for the English was not
+to be lightly won. [Sidenote: Expedition against the Narragansetts]
+
+On the night of December 18 their little army slept in an open field
+at Pettyquamscott without other blanket than a "moist fleece of snow."
+Thence to the Indian fortress, situated in what is now South Kingston,
+the march was eighteen miles. The morrow was a Sunday, but Winslow
+deemed it imprudent to wait, as food had wellnigh given out. Getting up
+at five o'clock, they toiled through deep snow till they came within
+sight of the Narragansett stronghold early in the afternoon. First came
+the 527 men from Massachusetts, led by Major Appleton, of Ipswich, and
+next the 158 from Plymouth, under Major Bradford; while Major Robert
+Treat, with the 300 from Connecticut, brought up the rear. There were
+985 men in all. As the Massachusetts men rushed upon the slippery bridge
+a deadly volley from the blockhouse slew six of their captains, while
+of the rank and file there were many killed or wounded. Nothing daunted
+they pressed on with great spirit till they forced their way into the
+enclosure, but then the head of their column, overcome by sheer weight
+of numbers in the hand-to-hand fight, was pushed and tumbled out into
+the swamp. Meanwhile some of the Connecticut men had discovered a path
+across the partly frozen swamp leading to a weak spot in the rear, where
+the palisades were thin and few, as undue reliance had been placed upon
+the steep bank crowned with a thick rampart of bushes that had been
+reinforced with clods of turf. In this direction Treat swept along with
+his men in a spirited charge. Before they had reached the spot a heavy
+fire began mowing them down, but with a furious rush they came up, and
+climbing on each other's shoulders, some fought their way over the
+rampart, while others hacked sturdily with axes till such a breach was
+made that all might enter. This was effected just as the Massachusetts
+men had recovered themselves and crossed the treacherous log in a second
+charge that was successful and soon brought the entire English force
+within the enclosure. In the slaughter which filled the rest of that
+Sunday afternoon till the sun went down behind a dull gray cloud, the
+grim and wrathful Puritan, as he swung his heavy cutlass, thought of
+Saul and Agag, and spared not. The Lord had delivered up to him the
+heathen as stubble to his sword. As usual the number of the slain
+is variously estimated. Of the Indians probably not less than 1000
+perished. Some hundreds, however, with Canonchet their leader, saved
+themselves in flight, well screened by the blinding snow-flakes that
+began to fall just after sunset. Within the fortified area had been
+stored the greater part of the Indians' winter supply of corn, and the
+loss of this food was a further deadly blow. Captain Church advised
+sparing the wigwams and using them for shelter, but Winslow seems to
+have doubted the ability of his men to maintain themselves in a position
+so remote from all support. The wigwams with their tubs of corn were
+burned, and a retreat was ordered. Through snowdrifts that deepened
+every moment the weary soldiers dragged themselves along until two hours
+after midnight, when they reached the tiny village of Wickford. Nearly
+one-fourth of their number had been killed or wounded, and many of the
+latter perished before shelter was reached. Forty of these were buried
+at Wickford in the course of the next three days. Of the Connecticut men
+eighty were left upon the swamp and in the breach at the rear of the
+stronghold. Among the spoils which the victors brought away were a
+number of good muskets that had been captured by the Nipmucks in their
+assault upon Deerfield. [Sidenote: Storming of the great swamp fortress,
+December 19]
+
+This headlong overthrow of the Narragansett power completely changed the
+face of things. The question was no longer whether the red men could
+possibly succeed in making New England too hot for the white men, but
+simply how long it would take for the white men to exterminate the red
+men. The shiftless Indian was abandoning his squalid agriculture and
+subsisting on the pillage of English farms; but the resources of the
+colonies, though severely taxed, were by no means exhausted. The dusky
+warriors slaughtered in the great swamp fight could not be replaced;
+but, as Roger Williams told the Indians, there were still ten thousand
+white men who could carry muskets, and should all these be slain, he
+added, with a touch of hyperbole, the Great Father in England could send
+ten thousand more. For the moment Williams seems to have cherished a
+hope that his great influence with the savages might induce them to
+submit to terms of peace while there was yet a remnant to be saved; but
+they were now as little inclined to parley as tigers brought to bay, nor
+was the temper of the colonists a whit less deadly, though it did not
+vent itself in inflicting torture or in merely wanton orgies of cruelty.
+[Sidenote: Effect of the blow]
+
+To the modern these scenes of carnage are painful to contemplate. In the
+wholesale destruction of the Pequots, and to a less degree in that of
+the Narragansetts, the death-dealing power of the white man stands forth
+so terrible and relentless that our sympathy is for a moment called
+out for his victim. The feeling of tenderness toward the weak, almost
+unknown among savages, is one of the finest products of civilization.
+Where murderous emotions are frequently excited, it cannot thrive. Such
+advance in humanity as we have made within recent times is chiefly
+due to the fact that the horrors of war are seldom brought home to
+everybody's door. Either war is conducted on some remote frontier, or if
+armies march through a densely peopled country the conditions of
+modern warfare have made it essential to their efficiency as military
+instruments that depredation and riot should be as far as possible
+checked. Murder and pillage are comparatively infrequent, massacre
+is seldom heard of, and torture is almost or quite as extinct as
+cannibalism. The mass of citizens escape physical suffering, the angry
+emotions are so directed upon impersonal objects as to acquire a strong
+ethical value, and the intervals of strife may find individual soldiers
+of hostile armies exchanging kindly services. Members of a complex
+industrial society, without direct experience of warfare save in this
+mitigated form, have their characters wrought upon in a way that is
+distinctively modern, as they become more and more disinclined to
+violence and cruelty. European historians have noticed, with words
+of praise, the freedom from bloodthirstiness which characterizes the
+American people. Mr. Lecky has more than once remarked upon this humane
+temperament which is so characteristic of our peaceful civilization, and
+which sometimes, indeed, shows the defects of its excellence and tends
+to weaken society by making it difficult to inflict due punishment upon
+the vilest criminals. In respect of this humanity the American of the
+nineteenth century has without doubt improved very considerably upon his
+forefathers of the seventeenth. The England of Cromwell and Milton
+was not, indeed, a land of hard-hearted people as compared with their
+contemporaries. The long experience of internal peace since the War
+of the Roses had not been without its effect; and while the Tudor and
+Stuart periods had atrocities enough, we need only remember what was
+going on at the same time in France and Germany in order to realize how
+much worse it might have been. In England, as elsewhere, however, it
+was, when looked at with our eyes, a rough and brutal time. It was a day
+of dungeons, whipping-posts, and thumbscrews, when slight offenders were
+maimed and bruised and great offenders cut into pieces by sentence of
+court. The pioneers of New England had grown up familiar with such
+things; and among the townspeople of Boston and Hartford in 1675 were
+still many who in youth had listened to the awful news from Magdeburg or
+turned pale over the horrors in Piedmont upon which Milton invoked the
+wrath of Heaven. [Sidenote: Growth of humane sentiment in recent times]
+
+When civilized men are removed from the safeguards of civilization and
+placed in the wilderness amid the hideous dangers that beset human
+existence in a savage state of society, whatever barbarism lies latent
+in them is likely to find many opportunities for showing itself.
+The feelings that stir the meekest of men, as he stands among the
+smouldering embers of his homestead and gazes upon the mangled bodies
+of wife and children, are feelings that he shares with the most
+bloodthirsty savage, and the primary effect of his higher intelligence
+and greater sensitiveness is only to increase their bitterness. The
+neighbour who hears the dreadful story is quick to feel likewise, for
+the same thing may happen to him, and there is nothing so pitiless as
+fear. With the Puritan such gloomy and savage passions seemed to find
+justification in the sacred text from which he drew his rules of life.
+To suppose that one part of the Bible could be less authoritative than
+another would have been to him an incomprehensible heresy; and bound
+between the same covers that included the Sermon on the Mount were tales
+of wholesale massacre perpetrated by God's command. Evidently the
+red men were not stray children of Israel, after all, but rather
+Philistines, Canaanites, heathen, sons of Belial, firebrands of hell,
+demons whom it was no more than right to sweep from the face of the
+earth. Writing in this spirit, the chroniclers of the time were
+completely callous in their accounts of suffering and ruin inflicted
+upon Indians, and, as has elsewhere been known to happen, those who
+did not risk their own persons were more truculent in tone than the
+professional fighters. Of the narrators of the war, perhaps the fairest
+toward the Indian is the doughty Captain Church, while none is more
+bitter and cynical than the Ipswich pastor William Hubbard. [Sidenote:
+Warfare with savages likely to be truculent in character]
+
+While the overthrow of the Narragansetts changed the face of things, it
+was far from putting an end to the war. It showed that when the white
+man could find his enemy he could deal crushing blows, but the Indian
+was not always so easy to find. Before the end of January Winslow's
+little army was partially disbanded for want of food, and its three
+contingents fell back upon Stonington, Boston, and Plymouth. Early in
+February the Federal Commissioners called for a new levy of 600 men to
+assemble at Brookfield, for the Nipmucks were beginning to renew their
+incursions, and after an interval of six months the figure of Philip
+again appears for a moment upon the scene. What he had been doing, or
+where he had been, since the Brookfield fight in August, was never
+known. When in February, 1676, he re-appeared it was still in company
+with his allies the Nipmucks, in their bloody assault upon Lancaster.
+On the 10th of that month at sunrise the Indians came swarming into the
+lovely village. Danger had already been apprehended, the pastor, Joseph
+Rowlandson, the only Harvard graduate of 1652, had gone to Boston to
+solicit aid, and Captain Wadsworth's company was slowly making its
+way over the difficult roads from Marlborough, but the Indians were
+beforehand. Several houses were at once surrounded and set on fire,
+and men, women, and children began falling under the tomahawk. The
+minister's house was large and strongly built, and more than forty
+people found shelter there until at length it took fire and they were
+driven out by the flames. Only one escaped, a dozen or more were slain,
+and the rest, chiefly women and children, taken captive. The Indians
+aimed at plunder as well as destruction; for they were in sore need of
+food and blankets, as well as of powder and ball. Presently, as they saw
+Wadsworth's armed men approaching, they took to flight and got away,
+with many prisoners and a goodly store of provisions. [Sidenote: Attack
+upon Lancaster, February 10, 1676]
+
+Among the captives was Mary Rowlandson, the minister's wife, who
+afterward wrote the story of her sad experiences. The treatment of the
+prisoners varied with the caprice or the cupidity of the captors. Those
+for whom a substantial ransom might be expected fared comparatively
+well; to others death came as a welcome relief. One poor woman with a
+child in her arms was too weak to endure the arduous tramp over the icy
+hillsides, and begged to be left behind, till presently the savages
+lost their patience. They built a fire, and after a kind of demon dance
+killed mother and child with a club and threw the bodies into the
+flames. Such treatment may seem exceptionally merciful, but those modern
+observers who best know the Indian's habits say that he seldom indulges
+in torture except when he has abundance of leisure and a mind quite
+undisturbed. He is an epicure in human agony and likes to enjoy it in
+long slow sips. It is for the end of the march that the accumulation
+of horrors is reserved; the victims by the way are usually despatched
+quickly; and in the case of Mrs. Rowlandson's captors their irregular
+and circuitous march indicates that they were on the alert. Their
+movements seem to have covered much of the ground between Wachusett
+mountain and the Connecticut river. They knew that the white squaw of
+the great medicine man of an English village was worth a heavy ransom,
+and so they treated Mrs. Rowlandson unusually well. She had been
+captured when escaping from the burning house, carrying in her arms her
+little six-year-old daughter. She was stopped by a bullet that grazed
+her side and struck the child. The Indian who seized them placed the
+little girl upon a horse, and as the dreary march began she kept moaning
+"I shall die, mamma." "I went on foot after it," says the mother, "with
+sorrow that cannot be expressed. At length I took it off the horse, and
+carried it in my arms till my strength failed me, and I fell down with
+it .... After this it quickly began to snow, and when night came on they
+stopped. And now down I must sit in the snow, by a little fire, and a
+few boughs behind me, with my sick child in my lap, and calling much for
+water, being now, through the wound, fallen into a violent fever ....
+Oh, may I see the wonderful power of God that my spirit did not utterly
+sink under my affliction; still the Lord upheld me with his gracious and
+merciful spirit." The little girl soon died. For three months the weary
+and heartbroken mother was led about the country by these loathsome
+savages, of whose habits and manners she gives a vivid description. At
+first their omnivorousness astonished her. "Skunks and rattlesnakes, yea
+the very bark of trees" they esteemed as delicacies. "They would pick up
+old bones and cut them in pieces at the joints, ... then boil them and
+drink up the liquor, and then beat the great ends of them in a mortar
+and so eat them." After some weeks of starvation Mrs. Rowlandson herself
+was fain to partake of such viands. One day, having made a cap for one
+of Philip's boys, she was invited to dine with the great sachem. "I
+went," she says, "and he gave me a pancake about as big as two fingers.
+It was made of parched wheat, beaten, and fried in bear's grease; but I
+thought I never tasted pleasanter meat in my life." Early in May she was
+redeemed for 20 pounds, and went to find her husband in Boston, where
+the Old South Church society hired a house for them. [Sidenote: Mrs.
+Rowlandson's narrative]
+
+Such was the experience of a captive whose treatment was, according to
+Indian notions, hospitable. There were few who came off so well. Almost
+every week while she was led hither and thither by the savages. Mrs.
+Rowlandson heard ghastly tales of fire and slaughter. It was a busy
+winter and spring for these Nipmucks. Before February was over, their
+exploit at Lancaster was followed by a shocking massacre at Medfield.
+They sacked and destroyed the towns of Worcester, Marlborough, Mendon,
+and Groton, and even burned some houses in Weymouth, within a dozen
+miles of Boston. Murderous attacks were made upon Sudbury, Chelmsford,
+Springfield, Hatfield, Hadley, Northampton, Wrentham, Andover,
+Bridgewater, Scituate, and Middleborough. On the 18th of April Captain
+Wadsworth, with 70 men, was drawn into an ambush near Sudbury,
+surrounded by 500 Nipmucks, and killed with 50 of his men; six
+unfortunate captives were burned alive over slow fires. But Wadsworth's
+party made the enemy pay dearly for his victory; that afternoon 120
+Nipmucks bit the dust. In such wise, by killing two or three for one,
+did the English wear out and annihilate their adversaries. Just one
+month from that day Captain Turner surprised and slaughtered 300 of
+these warriors near the falls of the Connecticut river which have
+since borne his name, and this blow at last broke the strength of
+the Nipmucks. [Sidenote: Virtual exterminations of the Indians,
+February--August, 1676]
+
+Meanwhile the Narragansetts and Wampanoags had burned the towns of
+Warwick and Providence. After the wholesale ruin of the great "swamp
+fight," Canonchet had still some 600 or 700 warriors left, and with
+these, on the 26th of March, in the neighbourhood of Pawtuxet, he
+surprised a company of 50 Plymouth men under Captain Pierce and slew
+them all, but not until he had lost 140 of his best warriors. Ten days
+later Captain Denison, with his Connecticut company, defeated and
+captured Canonchet, and the proud son of Miantonomo met the same fate
+as his father. He was handed over to the Mohegans and tomahawked. The
+Narragansett sachem had shown such bravery that it seemed, says the
+chronicler Hubbard, as if "some old Roman ghost had possessed the body
+of this western pagan." But next moment this pious clergyman, as if
+ashamed of the classical eulogy just bestowed upon the hated redskin,
+alludes to him as a "damned wretch." [Sidenote: Death of Canonchet]
+
+The fall of Canonchet marked the beginning of the end. In four sharp
+fights in the last week of June, Major Talcott, of Hartford, slew
+from 300 to 400 warriors, being nearly all that were left of the
+Narragansetts; and during the month of July Captain Church patrolled the
+country about Taunton, making prisoners of the Wampanoags. Once more
+King Philip, shorn of his prestige, comes upon the scene. We have seen
+that his agency in these cruel events had been at the outset a potent
+one. Whatever else it may have been, it was at least the agency of the
+match that explodes the powder-cask. Under the conditions of that savage
+society, organized leadership was not to be looked for. In the irregular
+and disorderly series of murdering raids Philip may have been often
+present, but except for Mrs. Rowlandson's narrative we should have known
+nothing of him since the Brookfield fight.
+
+At length in July, 1676, having seen the last of his Nipmuck friends
+overwhelmed, the tattered chieftain showed himself near Bridgewater,
+with a handful of followers. In these his own hunting-grounds some of
+his former friends had become disaffected. The daring and diplomatic
+Church had made his way into the wigwam of Ashawonks, the squaw sachem
+of Saconet, near Little Compton, and having first convinced her that a
+flask of brandy might be tasted without fatal results, followed up his
+advantage and persuaded her to make an alliance with the English. Many
+Indians came in and voluntarily surrendered themselves, in order to
+obtain favourable terms, and some lent their aid in destroying their old
+sachem. Defeated at Taunton, the son of Massasoit was hunted by Church
+to his ancient lair at Bristol Neck and there besieged. His only escape
+was over the narrow isthmus of which the pursuers now took possession,
+and in this dire extremity one of Philip's men presumed to advise his
+chief that the hour for surrender had come. For his unwelcome counsel
+the sachem forthwith lifted his tomahawk and struck him dead at his
+feet. Then the brother of the slain man crept away through the bushes to
+Church's little camp, and offered to guide the white men to the morass
+where Philip lay concealed. At daybreak of August 12 the English
+stealthily advancing beat up their prey. The savages in sudden panic
+rushed from under cover, and as the sachem showed himself running at the
+top of his speed, a ball from an Indian musket pierced his heart, and
+"he fell upon his face in the mud and water, with his gun under him."
+His severed head was sent to Plymouth, where it was mounted on a pole
+and exposed aloft upon the village green, while the meeting-house
+bell summoned the townspeople to a special service of thanksgiving.
+[Sidenote: Death of Philip, August 12]
+
+It may be supposed that in such services at this time a Christian
+feeling of charity and forgiveness was not uppermost. Among the captives
+was a son of Philip, the little swarthy lad of nine years for whom Mrs.
+Rowlandson had made a cap, and the question as to what was to be done
+with him occasioned as much debate as if he had been a Jesse Pomeroy
+[34] or a Chicago anarchist. The opinions of the clergy were, of course,
+eagerly sought and freely vouchsafed. One minister somewhat doubtfully
+urged that "although a precept in Deuteronomy explicitly forbids killing
+the child for the father's sin," yet after all "the children of Saul and
+Achan perished with their parents, though too young to have shared their
+guilt." Thus curiously did this English reverence for precedent, with a
+sort of grim conscientiousness colouring its gloomy wrath, search for
+guidance among the ancient records of the children of Israel. Commenting
+upon the truculent suggestion, Increase Mather, soon to be president of
+Harvard, observed that, "though David had spared the infant Hadad, yet
+it might have been better for his people if he had been less merciful."
+These bloodthirsty counsels did not prevail, but the course that was
+adopted did not lack in harshness. Among the sachems a dozen leading
+spirits were hanged or shot, and hundreds of captives were shipped off
+to the West Indies to be sold into slavery; among these was Philip's
+little son. The rough soldier Church and the apostle Eliot were among
+the few who disapproved of this policy. Church feared it might goad such
+Indians as were still at large to acts of desperation. Eliot, in an
+earnest letter to the Federal Commissioners, observed: "To sell souls
+for money seemeth to me dangerous merchandise." But the plan of
+exporting the captives was adhered to. As slaves they were understood to
+be of little or no value, and sometimes for want of purchasers they were
+set ashore on strange coasts and abandoned. A few were even carried to
+one of the foulest of mediaeval slave-marts, Morocco, where their fate
+was doubtless wretched enough. [Sidenote: Indians sold into slavery]
+
+In spite of Church's doubts as to the wisdom of this harsh treatment,
+it did not prevent the beaten and starving savages from surrendering
+themselves in considerable numbers. To some the Federal Commissioners
+offered amnesty, and the promise was faithfully fulfilled. Among those
+who laid down arms in reliance upon it were 140 Christian Indians, with
+their leader known as James the Printer, because he had been employed at
+Cambridge in setting up the type for Eliot's Bible. Quite early in the
+war it had been discovered that these converted savages still felt the
+ties of blood to be stronger than those of creed. At the attack on
+Mendon, only three weeks after the horrors at Swanzey that ushered in
+the war, it was known that Christian Indians had behaved themselves
+quite as cruelly as their unregenerate brethren. Afterwards they made
+such a record that the jokers and punsters of the day--for such there
+were, even among those sombre Puritans--in writing about the "Praying
+Indians," spelled _praying_ with an _e_. The moral scruples of these
+savages, under the influence of their evangelical training, betrayed
+queer freaks. One of them, says Mrs. Rowlandson, would rather die than
+eat horseflesh, so narrow and scrupulous was his conscience, although it
+was as wide as the whole infernal abyss, when it came to torturing
+white Christians. The student of history may have observed similar
+inconsistencies in the theories and conduct of people more enlightened
+than these poor red men. "There was another Praying Indian," continues
+Mrs. Rowlandson, "who, when he had done all the mischief he could,
+betrayed his own father into the English's hands, thereby to purchase
+his own life; ... and there was another ... so wicked ... as to wear
+a string about his neck, strung with Christian fingers." [Sidenote:
+Conduct of the Christian Indians]
+
+Such incidents help us to comprehend the exasperation of our forefathers
+in the days of King Philip. The month which witnessed his death saw also
+the end of the war in the southern parts of New England; but, almost
+before people had time to offer thanks for the victory, there came news
+of bloodshed on the northeastern frontier. The Tarratines in Maine had
+for some time been infected with the war fever. How far they may have
+been comprehended in the schemes of Philip and Canonchet, it would be
+hard to say. They had attacked settlers on the site of Brunswick as
+early as September, 1675. About the time of Philip's death, Major
+Waldron of Dover had entrapped a party of them by an unworthy stratagem,
+and after satisfying himself that they were accomplices in that
+chieftain's scheme, sent them to Boston to be sold into slavery. A
+terrible retribution was in store for Major Waldron thirteen years
+later. For the present the hideous strife, just ended in southern New
+England, was continued on the northeastern frontier, and there was
+scarcely a village between the Kennebec and the Piscataqua but was laid
+in ashes. [Sidenote: War with the Tarratines, 1676-78]
+
+By midsummer of 1678 the Indians had been everywhere suppressed, and
+there was peace in the land. For three years, since Philip's massacre
+at Swanzey, there had been a reign of terror in New England. Within
+the boundaries of Connecticut, indeed, little or no damage had been
+inflicted, and the troops of that colony, not needed on their own soil,
+did noble service in the common cause.
+
+In Massachusetts and Plymouth, on the other hand, the destruction of
+life and property had been simply frightful. Of ninety towns, twelve had
+been utterly destroyed, while more than forty others had been the scene
+of fire and slaughter. Out of this little society nearly a thousand
+staunch men, including not few of broad culture and strong promise, had
+lost their lives, while of the scores of fair women and poor little
+children that had perished under the ruthless tomahawk, one can hardly
+give an accurate account. Hardly a family throughout the land but was
+in mourning. The war-debt of Plymouth was reckoned to exceed the total
+amount of personal property in the colony; yet although it pinched every
+household for many a year, it was paid to the uttermost farthing; nor
+in this respect were Massachusetts and Connecticut at all behind-hand.
+[Sidenote: Destructiveness of the war]
+
+But while King Philip's War wrought such fearful damage to the English,
+it was for the Indians themselves utter destruction. Most of the
+warriors were slain, and to the survivors, as we have seen, the
+conquerors showed but scant mercy. The Puritan, who conned his Bible so
+earnestly, had taken his hint from the wars of the Jews, and swept
+his New English Canaan with a broom that was pitiless and searching.
+Henceforth the red man figures no more in the history of New England,
+except as an ally of the French in bloody raids upon the frontier. In
+that capacity he does mischief enough for yet a half-century more, but
+from central and southern New England, as an element of disturbance or a
+power to be reckoned with, he disappears forever.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE TYRANNY OF ANDROS.
+
+
+The beginnings of New England were made in the full daylight of modern
+history. It was an age of town records, of registered deeds, of
+contemporary memoirs, of diplomatic correspondence, of controversial
+pamphlets, funeral sermons, political diatribes, specific instructions,
+official reports, and private letters. It was not a time in which
+mythical personages or incredible legends could flourish, and such
+things we do find in the history of New England. There was nevertheless
+a romantic side to this history, enough to envelop some of its
+characters and incidents in a glamour that may mislead the modern
+reader. This wholesale migration from the smiling fields of merry
+England to an unexplored wilderness beyond a thousand leagues of sea was
+of itself a most romantic and thrilling event, and when viewed in the
+light of its historic results it becomes clothed with sublimity. The men
+who undertook this work were not at all free from self-consciousness.
+They believed that they were doing a wonderful thing. They felt
+themselves to be instruments in accomplishing a kind of "manifest
+destiny." Their exodus was that of a chosen people who were at length
+to lay the everlasting foundations of God's kingdom upon earth. Such
+opinions, which took a strong colour from their assiduous study of the
+Old Testament, reacted and disposed them all the more to search its
+pages for illustrations and precedents, and to regard it as an oracle,
+almost as a talisman. In every propitious event they saw a special
+providence, an act of divine intervention to deliver them from the
+snares of an ever watchful Satan. This steadfast faith in an unseen
+ruler and guide was to them a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by
+night. It was of great moral value. It gave them clearness of purpose
+and concentration of strength, and contributed toward making them,
+like the children of Israel, a people of indestructible vitality and
+aggressive energy. At the same time, in the hands of the Puritan
+writers, this feeling was apt to warp their estimates of events and
+throw such a romantic haze about things as seriously to interfere with a
+true historical perspective. [Sidenote: Romantic features in the early
+history of New England]
+
+Among such writings that which perhaps best epitomizes the Puritan
+philosophy is "The Wonder-working Providence of Zion's Saviour in New
+England," by Captain Edward Johnson, one of the principal founders of
+Woburn. It is an extremely valuable history of New England from 1628 to
+1651, and every page is alive with the virile energy of that stirring
+time. With narrative, argument, and apologue, abounding in honesty
+of purpose, sublimity of trust, and grotesqueness of fancy, wherein
+touching tenderness is often alternated with sternness most grim and
+merciless, yet now and then relieved by a sudden gleam of humour,--and
+all in a style that is usually uncouth and harsh, but sometimes bursts
+forth in eloquence worthy of Bunyan,--we are told how the founders of
+New England are soldiers of Christ enlisted in a holy war, and how they
+must "march manfully on till all opposers of Christ's kingly power be
+abolished." "And as for you who are called to sound forth his silver
+trumpets, blow loud and shrill to this chiefest treble tune--for the
+armies of the great Jehovah are at hand." "He standeth not as an idle
+spectator beholding his people's ruth and their enemies' rage, but as an
+actor in all actions, to bring to naught the desires of the wicked, ...
+having also the ordering of every weapon in its first produce, guiding
+every shaft that flies, leading each bullet to his place of settling,
+and weapon to the wound it makes." To men engaged in such a crusade
+against the powers of evil, nothing could seem insignificant or trivial;
+for, as Johnson continues, in truly prophetic phrase, "the Lord Christ
+intends to achieve greater matters by this little handful than the world
+is aware of." [Sidenote: Edward Johnson]
+
+The general sentiment of the early New England writers was like that
+of the "Wonder-working Providence," though it did not always find such
+rhapsodic expression. It has left its impress upon the minds of their
+children's children down to our own time, and has affected the opinions
+held about them by other people. It has had something to do with a
+certain tacit assumption of superiority on the part of New Englanders,
+upon which the men and women of other communities have been heard
+to comment in resentful and carping tones. There has probably never
+existed, in any age or at any spot on the earth's surface, a group of
+people that did not take for granted its own preeminent excellence. Upon
+some such assumption, as upon an incontrovertible axiom, all historical
+narratives, from the chronicles of a parish to the annals of an empire,
+alike proceed. But in New England it assumed a form especially apt to
+provoke challenge. One of its unintentional effects was the setting up
+of an unreal and impossible standard by which to judge the acts and
+motives of the Puritans of the seventeenth century. We come upon
+instances of harshness and cruelty, of narrow-minded bigotry, and
+superstitious frenzy; and feel, perhaps, a little surprised that
+these men had so much in common with their contemporaries. Hence the
+interminable discussion which has been called forth by the history of
+the Puritans, in which the conclusions of the writer have generally been
+determined by circumstances of birth or creed, or perhaps of reaction
+against creed. One critic points to the Boston of 1659 or the Salem of
+1692 with such gleeful satisfaction as used to stir the heart of Thomas
+Paine when he alighted upon an inconsistency in some text of the Bible;
+while another, in the firm conviction that Puritans could do no wrong,
+plays fast and loose with arguments that might be made to justify the
+deeds of a Torquemada. [Sidenote: Acts of the Puritans often judged by a
+wrong standard]
+
+From such methods of criticism it is the duty of historians as far as
+possible to free themselves. If we consider the Puritans in the light
+of their surroundings as Englishmen of the seventeenth century and
+inaugurators of a political movement that was gradually to change for
+the better the aspect of things all over the earth, we cannot fail to
+discern the value of that sacred enthusiasm which led them to regard
+themselves as chosen soldiers of Christ. It was the spirit of the
+"Wonder-working Providence" that hurled the tyrant from his throne at
+Whitehall and prepared the way for the emancipation of modern Europe. No
+spirit less intense, no spirit nurtured in the contemplation of things
+terrestrial, could ever have done it. The political philosophy of a Vane
+or a Sidney could never have done it. The passion for liberty as felt
+by a Jefferson or an Adams, abstracted and generalized from the love
+of particular liberties, was something scarcely intelligible to the
+seventeenth century. The ideas of absolute freedom of thought and
+speech, which we breathe in from childhood, were to the men of that age
+strange and questionable. They groped and floundered among them, very
+much as modern wool growers in Ohio or iron-smelters in Pennsylvania
+flounder and grope among the elementary truths of political economy. But
+the spirit in which the Hebrew prophet rebuked and humbled an idolatrous
+king was a spirit they could comprehend. Such a spirit was sure to
+manifest itself in narrow cramping measures and in ugly acts of
+persecution; but it is none the less to the fortunate alliance of
+that fervid religious enthusiasm with the Englishman's love of
+self-government that our modern freedom owes its existence. [Sidenote:
+Spirit of the Wonder-working Providence]
+
+The history of New England under Charles II. yields abundant proof that
+political liberty is no less indebted in the New World than in the Old
+to the spirit of the "Wonder-working Providence." The theocratic ideal
+which the Puritan sought to put into practice in Massachusetts and
+Connecticut was a sacred institution in faults of the defence of
+which all his faculties were kept perpetually alert. Much as he loved
+self-government he would never have been so swift to detect and so
+stubborn to resist every slightest encroachment on the part of the crown
+had not the loss of self-government involved the imminent danger that
+the ark of the Lord might be abandoned to the worshippers of Dagon.
+It was in Massachusetts, where the theocracy was strongest, that the
+resistance to Charles II. was most dogged and did most to prepare the
+way for the work of achieving political independence a century later.
+Naturally it was in Massachusetts at the same time that the faults
+of the theocracy were most conspicuous. It was there that priestly
+authority most clearly asserted itself in such oppressive acts as are
+always witnessed when too much power is left in the hands of men whose
+primary allegiance is to a kingdom not of this world. Much as we owe to
+the theocracy for warding off the encroachments of the crown, we cannot
+be sorry that it was itself crushed in the process. It was well that
+it did not survive its day of usefulness, and that the outcome of
+the struggle was what has been aptly termed "the emancipation of
+Massachusetts." [Sidenote: Merits and faults of the theocracy]
+
+The basis of the theocratic constitution of this commonwealth was the
+provision by which the exercise of the franchise was made an incident of
+church-membership. Unless a man could take part in the Lord's Supper, as
+administered in the churches of the colony, he could not vote or
+hold office. Church and state, parish and town, were thus virtually
+identified. Here, as in some other aspects of early New England, one is
+reminded of the ancient Greek cities, where the freeman who could
+vote in the market-place or serve his turn as magistrate was the man
+qualified to perform sacrifices to the tutelar deities of the tribe;
+other men might dwell in the city but had no share in making or
+executing its laws. The limitation of civil rights by religious tests is
+indeed one of those common inheritances from the old Aryan world that
+we find again and again cropping out, even down to the exclusion of
+Catholics from the House of Commons from 1562 to 1829. The obvious
+purpose of this policy in England was self-protection; and in like
+manner the restriction of the suffrage in Massachusetts was designed
+to protect the colony against aggressive episcopacy and to maintain
+unimpaired the uniformity of purpose which had brought the settlers
+across the ocean. Under the circumstances there was something to be
+said in behalf of such a measure of self-protection, and the principle
+required but slight extension to cover such cases as the banishment of
+Roger Williams and the Antinomians. There was another side to the case,
+however. From the very outset this exclusive policy was in some ways
+a source of weakness to Massachusetts, though we have seen that the
+indirect effect was to diversify and enrich the political life of New
+England as a whole. [Sidenote: Restriction of the suffrage to church
+members]
+
+At first it led to the departure of the men who founded Connecticut,
+and thereafter the way was certainly open for those who preferred the
+Connecticut policy to go where it prevailed. Some such segregation was
+no doubt effected, but it could not be complete and thorough. Men who
+preferred Boston without the franchise to Hartford with it would remain
+in Massachusetts; and thus the elder colony soon came to possess a
+discontented class of people, always ready to join hand in glove with
+dissenters or mischief-makers, or even with emissaries of the crown. It
+afforded a suggestive commentary upon all attempts to suppress human
+nature by depriving it of a share in political life; instead of keeping
+it inside where you can try conclusions with it fairly, you thrust it
+out to plot mischief in the dark. Within twenty years from the founding
+of Boston the disfranchisement of such citizens as could not participate
+in church-communion had begun to be regarded as a serious political
+grievance. These men were obliged to pay taxes and were liable to be
+called upon for military service against the Indians; and they naturally
+felt that they ought to have a voice in the management of public
+affairs. [Sidenote: It was a source of political discontent]
+
+Besides this fundamental ground of complaint, there were derivative
+grievances. Under the influence of the clergy justice was administered
+in somewhat inquisitorial fashion, there was an uncertainty as to just
+what the law was, a strong disposition to confuse questions of law with
+questions of ethics, and great laxity in the admission and estimation of
+evidence. As early as 1639 people had begun to complain that too much
+power was rested in the discretion of the magistrate, and they clamoured
+for a code of laws; but as Winthrop says, the magistrates and ministers
+were "not very forward in this matter," for they preferred to supplement
+the common law of England by decisions based on the Old Testament rather
+than by a body of statutes. It was not until 1649, after a persistent
+struggle, that the deputies won a decisive victory over the assistants
+and secured for Massachusetts a definite code of laws. In the New Haven
+colony similar theocratic notions led the settlers to dispense with
+trial by jury because they could find no precedent for it in the laws of
+Moses. Here, as in Massachusetts, the inquisitorial administration of
+justice combined with partial disfranchisement to awaken discontent, and
+it was partly for this reason that New Haven fell so easily under the
+sway of Connecticut. [Sidenote: Inquisitorial administration of justice]
+
+In Massachusetts after 1650 the opinion rapidly gained ground that all
+baptized persons of upright and decorous lives ought to be considered,
+for practical purposes, as members of the church, and therefore entitled
+to the exercise of political rights, even though unqualified for
+participation in the Lord's Supper. This theory of church-membership,
+based on what was at that time stigmatized as the "Halfway Covenant,"
+aroused intense opposition. It was the great question of the day. In
+1657 a council was held in Boston, which approved the principle of the
+Halfway Covenant; and as this decision was far from satisfying the
+churches, a synod of all the clergymen in Massachusetts was held five
+years later, to reconsider the great question. The decision of the synod
+substantially confirmed the decision of the council, but there were some
+dissenting voices. Foremost among the dissenters, who wished to retain
+the old theocratic regime in all its strictness, was Charles Chauncey,
+the president of Harvard College, and Increase Mather agreed with him
+at the time, though he afterward saw reason to change his opinion, and
+published two tracts in favour of the Halfway Covenant. Most bitter of
+all toward the new theory of church-membership was, naturally enough,
+Mr. Davenport of New Haven. [Sidenote: The "Halfway Covenant"]
+
+This burning question was the source of angry contentions in the First
+Church of Boston. Its teacher, the learned and melancholy Norton, died
+in 1663, and four years later the aged pastor, John Wilson, followed
+him. In choosing a successor to Wilson the church decided to declare
+itself in opposition to the liberal decision of the synod, and in token
+thereof invited Davenport to come from New Haven to take charge of it.
+Davenport, who was then seventy years old, was disgusted at the recent
+annexation of his colony to Connecticut. He accepted the invitation
+and came to Boston, against the wishes of nearly half of the Boston
+congregation who did not like the illiberal principle which he
+represented. In little more than a year his ministry at Boston was ended
+by death; but the opposition to his call had already proceeded so far
+that a secession from the old church had become inevitable. In 1669
+the advocates of the Halfway Covenant organized themselves into a new
+society under the title of the "Third Church in Boston." A wooden
+meeting-house was built on a lot which had once belonged to the late
+governor Winthrop, in what was then the south part of the town, so that
+the society and its meeting-house became known as the South Church; and
+after a new church founded in Summer Street in 1717 took the name of the
+New South, the church of 1669 came to be further distinguished as the
+Old South. As this church represented a liberal idea which was growing
+in favour with the people, it soon became the most flourishing church
+in America. After sixty years its numbers had increased so that the old
+meeting-house could not contain them; and in 1729 the famous building
+which still stands was erected on the same spot,--a building with a
+grander history than any other on the American continent, unless it be
+that other plain brick building in Philadelphia where the Declaration of
+Independence was adopted and the Federal Constitution framed. [Sidenote:
+Founding of the Old South Church, 1669]
+
+The wrath of the First Church at this secession from its ranks was
+deep and bitter, and for thirteen years it refused to entertain
+ecclesiastical intercourse with the South Church. But by 1682 it had
+become apparent that the king and his friends were meditating an attack
+upon the Puritan theocracy in New England. It had even been suggested,
+in the council for the colonies, that the Church of England should be
+established in Massachusetts, and that none but duly ordained Episcopal
+clergymen should be allowed to solemnize marriages. Such alarming
+suggestions began to impress the various Puritan churches with the
+importance of uniting their forces against the common enemy; and
+accordingly in 1682 the quarrel between the two Boston societies came to
+an end. There was urgent need of all the sympathy and good feeling that
+the community could muster, whereby to cheer itself in the crisis that
+was coming. The four years from 1684 to 1688 were the darkest years in
+the history of New England. Massachusetts, though not lacking in the
+spirit, had not the power to beard the tyrant as she did eighty years
+later. Her attitude toward the Stuarts--as we have seen--had been
+sometimes openly haughty and defiant, sometimes silent and sullen, but
+always independent. At the accession of Charles II. the colonists had
+thought it worth while to send commissioners to England to confer with
+the king and avoid a quarrel. Charles promised to respect their charter,
+but insisted that in return they must take an oath of allegiance to the
+crown, must administer justice in the king's name, and must repeal their
+laws restricting the right of suffrage to church members and prohibiting
+the Episcopal form of worship. [Sidenote: Founding of the Old South
+Church, 1669] [Sidenote: Demands of Charles II.]
+
+When the people of Massachusetts received this message they consented to
+administer justice in the king's name, but all the other matters were
+referred for consideration to a committee, and so they dropped out of
+sight. When the royal commissioners came to Boston in 1664, they were
+especially instructed to ascertain whether Massachusetts had complied
+with the king's demands; but upon this point the legislature stubbornly
+withheld any definite answer, while it frittered away the time in
+trivial altercations with the royal commissioners. The war with Holland
+and the turbulent state of English politics operated for several years
+in favour of this independent attitude of the colonists, though during
+all this time their enemies at court were busy with intrigues and
+accusations. Apart from mere slanders the real grounds of complaint
+were the restriction of the suffrage, whereby members of the Church of
+England were shut out; the claims of the eastern proprietors, heirs
+of Mason and Gorges, whose territory Massachusetts had absorbed;
+the infraction of the navigation laws; and the coinage of pine-tree
+shillings. The last named measure had been forced upon the colonists by
+the scarcity of a circulating medium. Until 1661 Indian wampum had been
+a legal tender, and far into the eighteenth century it remained current
+in small transactions. "In 1693 the ferriage from New York to Brooklyn
+was eight stivers in wampum or a silver twopence." [35] As early as
+1652 Massachusetts had sought to supply the deficiency by the issue of
+shillings and sixpences. It was an affair of convenience and probably
+had no political purpose. The infraction of the navigation laws was a
+more serious matter. "Ships from France, Spain, and the Canaries traded
+directly with Boston, and brought in goods which had never paid duty in
+any English port." [36] The effect of this was to excite the jealousy
+of the merchants in London and other English cities and to deprive
+Massachusetts of the sympathy of that already numerous and powerful
+class of people. [Sidenote: Complaints against Massachusetts]
+
+In 1675, the first year of King Philip's War, the British government
+made up its mind to attend more closely to the affairs of its American
+colonies. It had got the Dutch war off its hands, and could give heed to
+other things. The general supervision of the colonies was assigned to
+a standing committee of the privy council, styled the "Lords of the
+Committee of Trade and Plantations," and henceforth familiarly known
+as the "Lords of Trade." Next year the Lords of Trade sent an agent to
+Boston, with a letter to Governor Leverett about the Mason and Gorges
+claims. Under cover of this errand the messenger was to go about and
+ascertain the sentiments which people in the Kennebec and Piscataqua
+towns, as well as in Boston, entertained for the government of
+Massachusetts. The person to whom this work was entrusted was Edward
+Randolph, a cousin of Robert Mason who inherited the property claim to
+the Piscataqua county. To these men had old John Mason bequeathed his
+deadly feud with Massachusetts, and the fourteen years which Randolph
+now spent in New England were busily devoted to sowing the seeds of
+strife. In 1678 the king appointed him collector and surveyor of customs
+at the port of Boston, with instructions to enforce the navigation laws.
+Randolph was not the man to do unpopular things in such a way as to dull
+the edge of the infliction; he took delight in adding insult to injury.
+He was at once harsh and treacherous. His one virtue was pecuniary
+integrity; he was inaccessible to bribes and did not pick and steal from
+the receipts at the custom-house. In the other relations of life he
+was disencumbered of scruples. His abilities were not great, but his
+industry was untiring, and he pursued his enemies with the tenacity of a
+sleuth-hound. As an excellent British historian observes, "he was one of
+those men who, once enlisted as partisans, lose every other feeling in
+the passion which is engendered of strife." [37] [Sidenote: The Lords of
+Trade] [Sidenote: Edward Randolph]
+
+The arrival of such a man boded no good to Massachusetts. His reception
+at the town-house was a cold one. Leverett liked neither his looks nor
+his message, and kept his peaked hat on while he read the letter; when
+he came to the signature of the king's chief secretary of state, he
+asked, with careless contempt, "Who is this Henry Coventry?" Randolph's
+choking rage found vent in a letter to the king, taking pains to remind
+him that the governor of Massachusetts had once been an officer in
+Cromwell's army. As we read this and think with what ghoulish glee the
+writer would have betrayed Colonel Goffe into the hands of the headsman,
+had any clue been given him, we can quite understand why Hubbard and
+Mather had nothing to say about the mysterious stranger at Hadley.
+Everything that Randolph could think of that would goad and irritate the
+king, he reported in full to London; his letters were specimens of that
+worst sort of lie that is based upon distorted half-truths; and his
+malicious pen but seldom lay idle.
+
+While waiting for the effects of these reports to ripen, Randolph was
+busily intriguing with some of the leading men in Boston who were
+dissatisfied with the policy of the dominant party, and under his
+careful handling a party was soon brought into existence which was ready
+to counsel submission to the royal will. Such was the birth of Toryism
+in New England. The leader of this party was Joseph Dudley, son of
+the grim verse-maker who had come over as lieutenant to Winthrop. The
+younger Dudley was graduated at Harvard in 1665, and proceeded to study
+theology, but soon turned his attention entirely to politics. In 1673 he
+was a deputy from Roxbury in the General Court; in 1675 he took part in
+the storming of the Narragansett fort; in 1677 and the three following
+years he was one of the Federal Commissioners. In character and temper
+he differed greatly from his father. Like the proverbial minister's son
+whose feet are swift toward folly, Joseph Dudley seems to have learned
+in stern bleak years of childhood to rebel against the Puritan theory of
+life. Much of the abuse that has been heaped upon him, as a renegade and
+traitor, is probably undeserved. It does not appear that he ever made
+any pretence of love for the Puritan commonwealth, and there were many
+like him who had as lief be ruled by king as by clergy. But it cannot be
+denied that his suppleness and sagacity went along with a moral nature
+that was weak and vulgar. Joseph Dudley was essentially a self-seeking
+politician and courtier, like his famous kinsman of the previous
+century, Robert, Earl of Leicester. His party in Massachusetts was
+largely made up of men who had come to the colony for commercial
+reasons, and had little or no sympathy with the objects for which it was
+founded. Among them were Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Baptists, who
+were allowed no chance for public worship, as well as many others who,
+like Gallio, cared for none of these things. Their numbers, moreover,
+must have been large, for Boston had grown to be a town of 5000
+inhabitants, the population of Massachusetts was approaching 30,000,
+and, according to Hutchinson, scarcely one grown man in five was a
+church-member qualified to vote or hold office. Such a fact speaks
+volumes as to the change which was coming over the Puritan world. No
+wonder that the clergy had begun to preach about the weeds and tares
+that were overrunning Christ's pleasant garden. No wonder that the
+spirit of revolt against the disfranchising policy of the theocracy was
+ripe. [Sidenote: Joseph Dudley]
+
+It was in 1679, when this weakness of the body politic had been duly
+studied and reported by Randolph, and when all New England was groaning
+under the bereavements and burdens entailed by Philip's war, that the
+Stuart government began its final series of assaults upon Massachusetts.
+The claims of the eastern proprietors, the heirs of Mason and Gorges,
+furnished the occasion. Since 1643 the four Piscataqua towns--Hampton,
+Exeter, Dover, and Portsmouth--had remained under the jurisdiction of
+Massachusetts. After the Restoration the Mason claim had been revived,
+and in 1677 was referred to the chief-justices North and Rainsford.
+Their decision was that Mason's claim had always been worthless as based
+on a grant in which the old Plymouth Company had exceeded its powers.
+They also decided that Massachusetts had no valid claim since the
+charter assigned her a boundary just north of the Merrimack. This
+decision left the four towns subject to none but the king, who forthwith
+in 1679 proceeded to erect them into the royal province of New
+Hampshire, with president and council appointed by the crown, and an
+assembly chosen by the people, but endowed with little authority,--a
+tricksome counterfeit of popular government. Within three years an
+arrogant and thieving ruler, Edward Cranfield, had goaded New Hampshire
+to acts of insurrection. [Sidenote: Royal province of New Hampshire]
+
+To the decisions of the chief-justices Massachusetts must needs submit.
+The Gorges claim led to more serious results. Under Cromwell's rule in
+1652--the same year in which she began coining money--Massachusetts
+had extended her sway over Maine. In 1665 Colonel Nichols and his
+commissioners, acting upon the express instructions of Charles II.,
+took it away from her. In 1668, after the commissioners had gone home,
+Massachusetts coolly took possession again. In 1677 the chief-justices
+decided that the claim of the Gorges family, being based on a grant from
+James I., was valid. Then the young Ferdinando Gorges, grandson of the
+first proprietor, offered to sell the province to the king, who had now
+taken it into his head that he would like to bestow it upon the Duke
+of Monmouth, his favourite son by Lucy Walters. Before Charles had
+responded, Governor Leverett had struck a bargain with Gorges, who ceded
+to Massachusetts all his rights over Maine for L1250 in hard cash. When
+the king heard of this transaction he was furious. He sent a letter to
+Boston, commanding the General Court to surrender the province again on
+repayment of this sum of L1250, and expressing his indignation that
+the people should thus dare to dispose of an important claim off-hand
+without consulting his wishes. In the same letter the colony was
+enjoined to put in force the royal orders of seventeen years before,
+concerning the oath of allegiance, the restriction of the suffrage, and
+the prohibition of the Episcopal form of worship. [Sidenote: The Gorges
+claim]
+
+This peremptory message reached Boston about Christmas, 1679. Leverett,
+the sturdy Ironsides, had died six months before, and his place
+was filled by Simon Bradstreet, a man of moderate powers but great
+integrity, and held in peculiar reverence as the last survivor of those
+that had been chosen to office before leaving England by the leaders of
+the great Puritan exodus. Born in a Lincolnshire village in 1603, he was
+now seventy-six years old. He had taken his degree at Emmanuel College,
+Cambridge, had served as secretary to the Earl of Warwick, and in 1629
+had been appointed member of the board of assistants for the colony
+about to be established on Massachusetts bay. In this position he had
+remained with honour for half a century, while he had also served as
+Federal Commissioner and as agent for the colony in London. His wife,
+who died in 1672, was a woman of quaint learning and quainter verses,
+which her contemporaries admired beyond measure. One of her books was
+republished in London, with the title: "The Tenth Muse, lately sprung up
+in America." John Norton once said that if Virgil could only have heard
+the seraphic poems of Anne Bradstreet, he would have thrown his heathen
+doggerel into the fire. She was sister of Joseph Dudley, and evidently
+inherited this rhyming talent, such as it was, from her father. Governor
+Bradstreet belonged to the moderate party who would have been glad to
+extend the franchise, but he did not go with his brother-in-law in
+subservience to the king. [Sidenote: Simon Bradstreet and his wife]
+
+When the General Court assembled, in May, 1680, the full number of
+eighteen assistants appeared, for the first time in the history of the
+colony, and in accordance with an expressed wish of the king. They
+were ready to yield in trifles, but not in essentials. After wearisome
+discussion, the answer to the royal letter was decided on. It stated in
+vague and unsatisfactory terms that the royal orders of 1662 either had
+been carried out already or would be in good time, while to the demand
+for the surrender of Maine no reply whatever was made, save that "they
+were heartily sorry that any actings of theirs should be displeasing
+to his Majesty." After this, when Randolph wrote home that the king's
+letters were of no more account in Massachusetts than an old London
+Gazette, he can hardly be accused of stretching the truth. Randolph kept
+busily at work, and seems to have persuaded the Bishop of London that
+if the charter could be annulled, episcopacy might be established in
+Massachusetts as in England. In February, 1682, a letter came from the
+king demanding submission and threatening legal proceedings against the
+charter. Dudley was then sent as agent to London, and with him was sent
+a Mr. Richards, of the extreme clerical party, to watch him. [Sidenote:
+Massachusetts answers the king]
+
+Meanwhile the king's position at home had been changing. He had made
+up his mind to follow his father's example and try the experiment of
+setting his people at defiance and governing without a parliament. This
+could not be done without a great supply of money. Louis XIV. had
+plenty of money, for there was no constitution in France to prevent his
+squeezing what he wanted out of the pockets of an oppressed people.
+France was thriving greatly now, for Colbert had introduced a
+comparatively free system of trade between the provinces and inaugurated
+an era of prosperity soon to be cut short by the expulsion of the
+Huguenots. Louis could get money enough for the asking, and would be
+delighted to foment civil disturbances in England, so as to tie the
+hands of the only power which at that moment could interfere with his
+seizing Alsace and Lorraine and invading Flanders. The pretty Louise de
+Keroualle Duchess of Portsmouth, with her innocent baby face and heart
+as cold as any reptile's, was the French Delilah chosen to shear the
+locks of the British Samson. By such means and from such motives a
+secret treaty was made in February, 1681, by which Louis agreed to pay
+Charles 2,000,000 livres down, and 500,000 more in each of the next two
+years, on condition that he should summon no more parliaments within
+that time. This bargain for securing the means of overthrowing the laws
+and liberties of England was, on the part of Charles II., an act no less
+reprehensible than some of those for which his father had gone to the
+block. But Charles could now afford for a while to wreak his evil will.
+He had already summoned a parliament for the 21st of March, to meet at
+Oxford within the precincts of the subservient university, and out of
+reach of the high-spirited freemen of London. He now forced a quarrel
+with the new parliament and dissolved it within a week. A joiner named
+Stephen College, who had spoken his mind too freely in the taverns at
+Oxford with regard to these proceedings, was drawn and quartered. The
+Whig leader Lord Shaftesbury was obliged to flee to Holland. In the
+absence of a parliament the only power of organized resistance to the
+king's tyranny resided in the corporate governments of the chartered
+towns. The charter of London was accordingly attacked by a writ of
+_quo warranto_, and in June, 1683, the time-serving judges declared it
+confiscated. George Jeffreys, a low drunken fellow whom Charles had made
+Lord Chief Justice, went on a circuit through the country; and, as Roger
+North says, "made all the charters, like the walls of Jericho, fall down
+before him, and returned laden with surrenders, the spoils of towns."
+At the same time a terrible blow was dealt at two of the greatest Whig
+families in England. Lord William Russell, son of the Earl of Bedford,
+and Algernon Sidney, younger son of the Earl of Leicester, two of the
+purest patriots and ablest liberal leaders of the day, were tried on a
+false charge of treason and beheaded. [Sidenote: Secret treaty between
+Charles II. and Louis XIV] [Sidenote: Shameful proceedings in England]
+
+By this quick succession of high-handed measures, the friends of law and
+liberty were for a moment disconcerted and paralyzed. In the frightful
+abasement of the courts of justice which these events so clearly showed,
+the freedom of Englishmen seemed threatened in its last stronghold. The
+doctrine of passive obedience to monarchs was preached in the pulpits
+and inculcated by the university of Oxford, which ordered the works of
+John Milton to be publicly burned. Sir Robert Filmer wrote that "not
+only in human laws, but even in divine, a thing may by the king be
+commanded contrary to law, and yet obedience to such a command is
+necessary." Charles felt so strong that in 1684 he flatly refused to
+summon a parliament.
+
+It was not long before the effects of all this were felt in New England.
+The mission of Dudley and his colleague was fruitless. They returned to
+Boston, and Randolph, who had followed them to London, now followed them
+back, armed with a writ of _quo warranto_ which he was instructed not to
+serve until he should have given Massachusetts one more chance to humble
+herself in the dust. Should she modify her constitution to please a
+tyrant or see it trampled under foot? Recent events in England served
+for a solemn warning; for the moment the Tories were silenced; perhaps
+after all, the absolute rule of a king was hardly to be preferred to the
+sway of the Puritan clergy; the day when the House of Commons sat still
+and wept seemed to have returned. A great town-meeting was held in the
+Old South Meeting-House, and the moderator requested all who were for
+surrendering the charter to hold up their hands. Not a hand was lifted,
+and out from the throng a solitary voice exclaimed, with deep-drawn
+breath, "The Lord be praised!" Then arose Increase Mather, president
+of Harvard College, and reminded them how their fathers did win this
+charter, and should they deliver it up unto the spoiler who demanded it
+"even as Ahab required Naboth's vineyard, Oh! their children would be
+bound to curse them." Such was the attitude of Massachusetts, and when
+it was known in London, the blow was struck. For technical reasons
+Randolph's writ was not served; but on the 21st of June a decree in
+chancery annulled the charter of Massachusetts. [Sidenote: Massachusetts
+refuses to surrender her charter] [Sidenote: It is annulled by degree of
+chancery, June 21, 1684]
+
+To appreciate the force of this blow we must pause for a moment and
+consider what it involved. The right to the soil of North America had
+been hitherto regarded in England, on the strength of the discoveries of
+the Cabots, as an appurtenance to the crown of Henry VII.,--as something
+which descended from father to son like the palace at Hampton Court or
+the castle at Windsor, but which the sovereign might alienate by his
+voluntary act just as he might sell or give away a piece of his royal
+domain in England. Over this vast territory it was doubtful how far
+Parliament was entitled to exercise authority, and the rights of
+Englishmen settled there had theoretically no security save in the
+provisions of the various charters by which the crown had delegated its
+authority to individual proprietors or to private companies. It was thus
+on the charter granted by Charles I. to the Company of Massachusetts Bay
+that not only the cherished political and ecclesiastical institutions
+of the colony, but even the titles of individuals to their lands and
+houses, were supposed to be founded. By the abrogation of the charter,
+all rights and immunities that had been based upon it were at once swept
+away, and every rood of the soil of Massachusetts became the personal
+property of the Stuart king, who might, if he should possess the will
+and the power, turn out all the present occupants or otherwise deal with
+them as trespassers. Such at least was the theory of Charles II., and
+to show that he meant to wreak his vengeance with no gentle hand, he
+appointed as his viceroy the brutal Percy Kirke,--a man who would have
+no scruples about hanging a few citizens without trial, should occasion
+require it. [Sidenote: Effect of annulling the charter]
+
+But in February, 1685, just as Charles seemed to be getting everything
+arranged to his mind, a stroke of apoplexy carried him off the scene,
+and his brother ascended the throne. Monmouth's rebellion, and the
+horrible cruelties that followed, kept Colonel Kirke busy in England
+through the summer, and left the new king scant leisure to think about
+America. Late in the autumn, having made up his mind that he could not
+spare such an exemplary knave as Kirke, James II. sent over Sir Edmund
+Andros. In the mean time the government of Massachusetts had been
+administered by Dudley, who showed himself willing to profit by the
+misfortunes of his country. Andros had long been one of James's
+favourites. He was the dull and dogged English officer such as one often
+meets, honest enough and faithful to his master, neither cruel nor
+rapacious, but coarse in fibre and wanting in tact. Some years
+before, when governor of New York, he had a territorial dispute with
+Connecticut, and now cherished a grudge against the people of New
+England, so that, from James's point of view, he was well fitted to be
+their governor. James wished to abolish all the local governments
+in America, and unite them, as far as possible, under a single
+administration. With Plymouth there could be no trouble; she had never
+had a charter, but had existed on sufferance from the outset. In 1687
+the charters of Rhode Island and Connecticut were rescinded, but the
+decrees were not executed in due form. In October of that year Andros
+went to Hartford, to seize the Connecticut charter but it was not
+surrendered. While Sir Edmund was bandying threats with stout Robert
+Treat, the queller of Indians and now governor of Connecticut, in the
+course of their evening conference the candles were suddenly blown out,
+and when after some scraping of tinder they were lighted again the
+document was nowhere to be found, for Captain Wadsworth had carried
+it away and hidden it in the hollow trunk of a mighty oak tree.
+Nevertheless for the moment the colony was obliged to submit to the
+tyrant. Next day the secretary John Allyn wrote "Finis" on the colonial
+records and shut up the book. Within another twelvemonth New York and
+New Jersey were added to the viceroyalty of Andros; so that all the
+northern colonies from the forests of Maine to the Delaware river were
+thus brought under the arbitrary rule of one man, who was responsible to
+no one but the king for whatever he might take it into his head to do.
+[Sidenote: Sir Edmund Andros] [Sidenote: The Charter Oak]
+
+The vexatious character of the new government was most strongly felt at
+Boston where Andros had his headquarters. Measures were at once taken
+for the erection of an Episcopal church, and meantime the royal order
+was that one of the principal meeting-houses should be seized for the
+use of the Church of England. This was an ominous beginning. In the
+eyes of the people it was much more than a mere question of disturbing
+Puritan prejudices. They had before them the experience of Scotland
+during the past ten years, the savage times of "Old Mortality," the
+times which had seen the tyrannical prelate, on the lonely moor, begging
+in vain for his life, the times of Drumclog and Bothwell Brigg, of
+Claverhouse and his flinty-hearted troopers, of helpless women tied to
+stakes on the Solway shore and drowned by inches in the rising tide.
+What had happened in one part of the world might happen in another, for
+the Stuart policy was the same. It aimed not at securing toleration but
+at asserting unchecked supremacy. Its demand for an inch was the prelude
+to its seizing an ell, and so our forefathers understood it. Sir
+Edmund's formal demand for the Old South Meeting-House was flatly
+refused, but on Good Friday, 1687, the sexton was frightened into
+opening it, and thenceforward Episcopal services were held there
+alternately with the regular services until the overthrow of Andros. The
+pastor, Samuel Willard, was son of the gallant veteran who had rescued
+the beleaguered people of Brookfield in King Philip's war. Amusing
+passages occurred between him and Sir Edmund, who relished the
+pleasantry of keeping minister and congregation waiting an hour or
+two in the street on Sundays before yielding to them the use of their
+meeting-house. More kindly memories of the unpopular governor are
+associated with the building of the first King's Chapel on the spot
+where its venerable successor now stands. The church was not finished
+until after Sir Edmund had taken his departure, but Lady Andros, who
+died in February, 1688, lies in the burying-ground hard by. Her gentle
+manners had won all hearts. For the moment, we are told, one touch of
+nature made enemies kin, and as Sir Edmund walked to the townhouse
+"many a head was bared to the bereaved husband that before had remained
+stubbornly covered to the exalted governor." [38] [Sidenote: Episcopal
+services in Boston] [Sidenote: Founding of the King's Chapel, 1689]
+
+The despotic rule of Andros was felt in more serious ways than in the
+seizing upon a meetinghouse. Arbitrary taxes were imposed, encroachments
+were made upon common lands as in older manorial times, and the writ of
+_habeas corpus_ was suspended. Dudley was appointed censor of the press,
+and nothing was allowed to be printed without his permission. All the
+public records of the late New England governments were ordered to be
+brought to Boston, whither it thus became necessary to make a tedious
+journey in order to consult them. All deeds and wills were required
+to be registered in Boston, and excessive fees were charged for the
+registry. It was proclaimed that all private titles to land were to be
+ransacked, and that whoever wished to have his title confirmed must pay
+a heavy quit-rent, which under the circumstances amounted to blackmail.
+The General Court was abolished. The power of taxation was taken from
+the town-meetings and lodged with the governor. Against this crowning
+iniquity the town of Ipswich, led by its sturdy pastor, John Wise, made
+protest. In response Mr. Wise was thrown into prison, fined £50, and
+suspended from the ministry. A notable and powerful character was this
+John Wise. One of the broadest thinkers and most lucid writers of his
+time, he seems like a forerunner of the liberal Unitarian divines of
+the nineteenth century. His "Vindication of the Government of the New
+England Churches," published in 1717, was a masterly exposition of the
+principles of civil government, and became "a text book of liberty for
+our Revolutionary fathers, containing some of the notable expressions
+that are used in the Declaration of Independence." [Sidenote: Tyranny]
+[Sidenote: John Wise of Ipswich]
+
+It was on the trial of Mr. Wise in October, 1687, that Dudley openly
+declared that the people of New England had now no further privileges
+left them than not to be sold for slaves. Such a state of things in the
+valley of the Euphrates would not have attracted comment; the peasantry
+of central Europe would have endured it until better instructed; but in
+an English community it could not last long. If James II. had remained
+upon the throne, New England would surely have soon risen in rebellion
+against Andros. But the mother country had by this time come to repent
+the fresh lease of life which she had granted to the Stuart dynasty
+after Cromwell's death. Tired of the disgraceful subservience of her
+Court to the schemes of Louis XIV., tired of fictitious plots and
+judicial murders, tired of bloody assizes and declarations of indulgence
+and all the strange devices of Stuart tyranny, England endured the
+arrogance of James but three years, and then drove him across the
+Channel, to get such consolation as he might from his French paymaster
+and patron. On the 4th of April, 1689, the youthful John Winslow brought
+to Boston the news of the landing of the Prince of Orange in England.
+For the space of two weeks there was quiet and earnest deliberation
+among the citizens, as the success of the Prince's enterprise was not
+yet regarded as assured. But all at once, on the morning of the 18th,
+the drums beat to arms, the signal-fire was lighted on Beacon Hill, a
+meeting was held at the Town-House, militia began to pour in from the
+country, and Andros, summoned to surrender, was fain to beseech Mr.
+Willard and the other ministers to intercede for him. But the ministers
+refused. Next day the Castle was surrendered, the Rose frigate riding in
+the harbour was seized and dismantled, and Andros was arrested as he was
+trying to effect his escape disguised in woman's clothes. Dudley and the
+other agents of tyranny were also imprisoned, and thus the revolution
+was accomplished. It marks the importance which the New England colonies
+were beginning to attain, that, before the Prince of Orange had fully
+secured the throne, he issued a letter instructing the people of Boston
+to preserve decorum and acquiesce yet a little longer in the government
+of Andros, until more satisfactory arrangements could be made. But
+Increase Mather, who was then in London on a mission in behalf of New
+England, judiciously prevented this letter of instructions from being
+sent. The zeal of the people outstripped the cautious policy of the
+new sovereign, and provisional governments, in accordance with the old
+charters, were at once set up in the colonies lately ruled by Andros.
+Bradstreet now in his eighty-seventh year was reinstated as governor of
+Massachusetts. Five weeks after this revolution in Boston the order to
+proclaim King William and Queen Mary was received, amid such rejoicings
+as had never before been seen in that quiet town, for it was believed
+that self-government would now be guaranteed to New England. [Sidenote:
+Fall of James II.] [Sidenote: Insurrection in Boston, and overthrow of
+Andros, April 18, 1689]
+
+This hope was at least so far realized that from the most formidable
+dangers which had threatened it, New England was henceforth secured.
+The struggle with the Stuarts was ended, and by this second revolution
+within half a century the crown had received a check from which it never
+recovered. There were troubles yet in store for England, but no more
+such outrages as the judicial murders of Russell and Sidney. New England
+had still a stern ordeal to go through, but never again was she to be
+so trodden down and insulted as in the days of Andros. The efforts of
+George III. to rule Englishmen despotically were weak as compared with
+those of the Stuarts. In his time England had waxed strong enough to
+curb the tyrant, America had waxed strong enough to defy and disown him.
+After 1689 the Puritan no longer felt that his religion was in danger,
+and there was a reasonable prospect that charters solemnly granted him
+would be held sacred. William III. was a sovereign of modern type, from
+whom freedom of thought and worship had nothing to fear. In his theology
+he agreed, as a Dutch Calvinist, more nearly with the Puritans than with
+the Church of England. At the same time he had no great liking for so
+much independence of thought and action as New England had exhibited. In
+the negotiations which now definitely settled the affairs of this part
+of the world, the intractable behaviour of Massachusetts was borne in
+mind and contrasted with the somewhat less irritating attitude of
+the smaller colonies. It happened that the decree which annulled the
+charters of Rhode Island and Connecticut had not yet been formally
+enrolled. It was accordingly treated as void, and the old charters were
+allowed to remain in force. They were so liberal that no change in
+them was needed at the time of the Revolution, so that Connecticut was
+governed under its old charter until 1818, and Rhode Island until 1842.
+[Sidenote: Effects of the Revolution of 1689]
+
+There was at this time a disposition on the part of the British
+government to unite all the northern colonies under a single
+administration. The French in Canada were fast becoming rivals to be
+feared; and the wonderful explorations of La Salle, bringing the St.
+Lawrence into political connection with the Mississippi, had at length
+foreshadowed a New France in the rear of all the English colonies,
+aiming at the control of the centre of the continent and eager to
+confine the English to the sea-board. Already the relations of position
+which led to the great Seven Years' War were beginning to shape
+themselves; and the conflict between France and England actually broke
+out in 1689, as soon as Louis XIV.'s hired servant, James II., was
+superseded by William III. as king of England and head of a Protestant
+league. [Sidenote: Need for union among all the northern colonies]
+
+In view of this new state of affairs, it was thought desirable to unite
+the northern English colonies under one head, so far as possible, in
+order to secure unity of military action. But natural prejudices had to
+be considered. The policy of James II. had aroused such bitter feeling
+in America that William must needs move with caution. Accordingly he did
+not seek to unite New York with New England, and he did not think it
+worth while to carry out the attack which James had only begun upon
+Connecticut and Rhode Island. As for New Hampshire, he seems to have
+been restrained by what in the language of modern politics would be
+called "pressure," brought to bear by certain local interests. [39]
+But in the case of the little colony founded by the Pilgrims of the
+Mayflower there was no obstacle. She was now annexed to Massachusetts,
+which also received not only Maine but even Acadia, just won from the
+French; so that, save for the short break at Portsmouth, the coast of
+Massachusetts now reached all the way from Martha's Vineyard to the Gulf
+of St. Lawrence. [Sidenote: Plymouth, Maine, and Acadia, annexed to
+Massachusetts]
+
+But along with this great territorial extension there went some
+curtailment of the political privileges of the colony. By the new
+charter of 1692 the right of the people to be governed by a legislature
+of their own choosing was expressly confirmed. The exclusive right of
+this legislature to impose taxes was also confirmed. But henceforth no
+qualification of church-membership, but only a property qualification,
+was to be required of voters; the governor was to be appointed by the
+crown instead of being elected by the people; and all laws passed by
+the legislature were to be sent to England for royal approval. These
+features of the new charter,--the extension, or if I may so call it, the
+_secularization_ of the franchise, the appointment of the governor
+by the crown, and the power of veto which the crown expressly
+reserved,--were grave restrictions upon the independence which
+Massachusetts had hitherto enjoyed. Henceforth her position was to be
+like that of the other colonies with royal governors. But her history
+did not thereby lose its interest or significance, though it became,
+like the history of most of the colonies, a dismal record of
+irrepressible bickerings between the governor appointed by the crown and
+the legislature elected by the people. In the period that began in 1692
+and ended in 1776, the movements of Massachusetts, while restricted
+and hampered, were at the same time forced into a wider orbit. She was
+brought into political sympathy with Virginia. While two generations
+of men were passing across the scene, the political problems of
+Massachusetts were assimilated to those of Virginia. In spite of all
+the other differences, great as they were, there was a likeness in the
+struggles between the popular legislature and the royal governor which
+subordinated them all. It was this similarity of experience, during
+the eighteenth century, that brought these two foremost colonies into
+cordial alliance during the struggle against George III., and thus made
+it possible to cement all the colonies together in the mighty nation
+whose very name is fraught with so high and earnest a lesson to
+mankind,--the UNITED STATES! [Sidenote: Massachusetts becomes a royal
+province]
+
+For such a far-reaching result, the temporary humiliation of
+Massachusetts was a small price to pay. But it was not until long after
+the accession of William III. that things could be seen in these grand
+outlines. With his coronation began the struggle of seventy years
+between France and England, far grander than the struggle between Rome
+and Carthage, two thousand years earlier, for primacy in the world,
+for the prerogative of determining the future career of mankind. That
+warfare, so fraught with meaning, was waged as much upon American as
+upon European ground; and while it continued, it was plainly for the
+interest of the British government to pursue a conciliatory policy
+toward its American colonies, for without their wholehearted assistance
+it could have no hope of success. As soon as the struggle was ended, and
+the French power in the colonial world finally overthrown, the perpetual
+quarrels between the popular legislatures and the royal governors led
+immediately to the Stamp Act and the other measures of the British
+government that brought about the American revolution. People sometimes
+argue about that revolution as if it had no past behind it and was
+simply the result of a discussion over abstract principles. [Sidenote:
+Seeds of the American Revolution already sown]
+
+We can now see that while the dispute involved an abstract principle of
+fundamental importance to mankind, it was at the same time for Americans
+illustrated by memories sufficiently concrete and real. James Otis
+in his prime was no further distant from the tyranny of Andros than
+middle-aged men of to-day are distant from the Missouri Compromise. The
+sons of men cast into jail along with John Wise may have stood silent in
+the moonlight on Griffin's Wharf and looked on while the contents of the
+tea-chests were hurled into Boston harbour. In the events we have here
+passed in review, it may be seen, so plainly that he who runs may read,
+how the spirit of 1776 was foreshadowed in 1689.
+
+
+
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.
+
+
+An interesting account of the Barons' War and the meeting of the first
+House of Commons is given in Prothero's _Simon de Montfort_, London,
+1877. For Wyclif and the Lollards, see Milman's _Latin Christianity_,
+vol. vii.
+
+The ecclesiastical history of the Tudor period may best be studied in
+the works of John Strype, to wit, _Historical Memorials_, 6 vols.;
+_Annals of the Reformation_, 7 vols.; _Lives of Cranmer, Parker,
+Whitgift, etc._, Oxford, 1812-28. See also _Burnet's History of the
+Reformation of the Church of England_, 3 vols., London, 1679-1715;
+Neal's _History of the Puritans_, London, 1793; Tulloch, _Leaders of the
+Reformation_, Boston, 1859. A vast mass of interesting information is
+to be found in _The Zurich Letters, comprising the Correspondence
+of Several English Bishops, and Others, with some of the Helvetian
+Reformers_, published by the Parker Society, 4 vols., Cambridge, Eng.,
+1845-46. Hooker's _Ecclesiastical Polity_ was published in London, 1594;
+a new edition, containing two additional books, the first complete
+edition, was published in 1622.
+
+For the general history of England in the seventeenth century, there are
+two modern works which stand far above all others,--Gardiner's _History
+of England_, 10 vols., London, 1883-84; and Masson's _Life of Milton,
+narrated in connection with the Political, Ecclesiastical, and Literary
+History of his Time_, 6 vols., Cambridge, Eng., 1859-80. These are
+books of truly colossal erudition, and written in a spirit of judicial
+fairness. Mr. Gardiner's ten volumes cover the forty years from the
+accession of James I. to the beginning of the Civil War, 1603-1643. Mr.
+Gardiner has lately published the first two volumes of his history of
+the Civil War, and it is to be hoped that he will not stop until he
+reaches the accession of William and Mary. Indeed, such books as his
+ought never to stop. My friend and colleague, Prof. Hosmer, tells me
+that Mr. Gardiner is a lineal descendant of Cromwell and Ireton. His
+little book, _The Puritan Revolution_, in the "Epochs of History"
+series, is extremely useful, and along with it one should read Airy's
+_The English Restoration and Louis XIV_., in the same series, New York,
+1889. The best biography of Cromwell is by Mr. Allanson Picton, London,
+1882; see also Frederic Harrison's _Cromwell_, London, 1888, an
+excellent little book. Hosmer's _Young Sir Henry Vane_, Boston, 1888,
+should be read in the same connection; and one should not forget
+Carlyle's _Cromwell_. See also Tulloch, _English Puritanism and its
+Leaders_, 1861, and _Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy in
+England in the Seventeenth Century_, 1872; Skeats, _History of the
+Free Churches of England_, London, 1868; Mountfield, _The Church and
+Puritans_, London, 1881. Dexter's _Congregationalism of the Last Three
+Hundred Years_, New York, 1880, is a work of monumental importance.
+
+On the history of New England the best general works are Palfrey,
+_History of New England_, 4 vols., Boston, 1858-75; and Doyle, _The
+English in America--The Puritan Colonies_, 2 vols., London, 1887. In
+point of scholarship Dr. Palfrey's work is of the highest order, and
+it is written in an interesting style. Its only shortcoming is that it
+deals somewhat too leniently with the faults of the Puritan theocracy,
+and looks at things too exclusively from a Massachusetts point of view.
+It is one of the best histories yet written in America. Mr. Doyle's work
+is admirably fair and impartial, and is based throughout upon a careful
+study of original documents. The author is a Fellow of All Souls
+College, Oxford, and has apparently made American history his specialty.
+His work on the Puritan colonies is one of a series which when completed
+will cover the whole story of English colonization in America. I have
+looked in vain in his pages for any remark or allusion indicating that
+he has ever visited America, and am therefore inclined to think that he
+has not done so. He now and then makes a slight error such as would
+not be likely to be made by a native of New England, but this is very
+seldom. The accuracy and thoroughness of its research, its judicial
+temper, and its philosophical spirit make Mr. Doyle's book in some
+respects the best that has been written about New England.
+
+Among original authorities we may begin by citing John Smith's
+_Description of New England_, 1616, and _New England's Trial_, 1622,
+contained in Arber's new edition of Smith's works, London, 1884.
+Bradford's narrative of the founding of Plymouth was for a long time
+supposed to be lost. Nathaniel Morton's _New England's Memorial_,
+published in 1669, was little more than an abridgment of it. After two
+centuries Bradford's manuscript was discovered, and an excellent edition
+by Mr. Charles Deane was published in the _Massachusetts Historical
+Collections_, 4th series, vol. iii., 1856. Edward Winslow's _Journal of
+the Proceedings of the English Plantation settled at Plymouth_, 1622,
+and _Good News from New England_, 1624, are contained, with other
+valuable materials, in Young's _Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers_,
+Boston, 1844. See also Shurtleff and Pulsifer, _Records of Plymouth_,
+12 vols., ending with the annexation of the colony to Massachusetts in
+1692; Prince's _Chronological History of New England_, ed. Drake, 1852;
+and in this connection Hunter's _Founders of New Plymouth_, London,
+1854; Steele's _Life of Brewster_, Philadelphia, 1857; Goodwin's
+_Pilgrim Republic_, Boston, 1887; Bacon's _Genesis of the New England
+Churches_, New York, 1874; Baylies's _Historical Memoir_, 1830;
+Thacher's _History of the Town of Plymouth_, 1832.
+
+Sir Ferdinando Gorges wrote a _Briefe Narration of the Originall
+Undertakings of the advancement of plantations into the parts of
+America, especially showing the beginning, progress, and continuance
+of that of New England_, London, 1658, contained in his grandson's
+collection entitled _America Painted to the Life_. Thomas Morton, of
+Merrymount, gave his own view of the situation in his _New English
+Canaan_, which has been edited for the Prince Society, with great
+learning, by C.F. Adams. Samuel Maverick also had his say in a valuable
+pamphlet entitled _A Description of New England_, which has only come
+to light since 1875 and has been edited by Mr. Deane. Maverick is, of
+course, hostile to the Puritans. See also Lechford's _Plain Dealing in
+New England_, ed. J.H. Trumbull, 1867.
+
+The earliest history of Massachusetts is by Winthrop himself, a work of
+priceless value. In 1790, nearly a century and a half after the author's
+death, it was published at Hartford. The best edition is that of 1853.
+In 1869 a valuable life of Winthrop was published by his descendant
+Robert Winthrop. Hubbard's _History of New England_ (_Mass. Hist.
+Coll._, 2d series, vols. v., vi.) is drawn largely from Winthrop and
+from Nathaniel Morton. There is much that is suggestive in William
+Wood's _New England's Prospect_, 1634, and Edward Johnson's
+_Wonder-working Providence of Zion's Saviour in New England_, 1654; the
+latter has been ably edited by W.F. Poole, Andover, 1867. The records
+of the Massachusetts government, from its founding in 1629 down to the
+overthrow of the charter in 1684, were edited by Dr. Shurtleff in 6
+vols. quarto, 1853-54; and among the documents in the British Record
+Office, published since 1855, three volumes--_Calendar of State Papers_,
+_Colonial America_, vol. i., 1574-1660; vol. v., 1661-1668; vol. vii.,
+1669--are especially useful. Of the later authorities the best is
+Hutchinson's _History of Massachusetts Bay_, the first volume of which,
+coming down to 1689, was published in Boston in 1764. The second volume,
+continuing the narrative to 1749, was published in 1767. The third
+volume, coming down to 1774, was found among the illustrious author's
+MSS. after his death, and was published in London in 1828. Hutchinson
+had access to many valuable documents since lost, and his sound judgment
+and critical acumen deserve the highest praise. In 1769 he published
+a volume of _Original Papers_, illustrating the period covered by the
+first volume of his history. Many priceless documents perished in the
+shameful sacking of his house by the Boston rioters, Aug. 26, 1765. The
+second volume of Hutchinson's _History_ was continued to 1764 by G.R.
+Minot, 2 vols., 1798, and to 1820 by Alden Bradford, 3 vols., 1822-29.
+Of recent works, the best is Barry's _History of Massachusetts_, 3
+vols., 1855-57. Many original authorities are collected in Young's
+_Chronicles of Massachusetts_, Boston, 1846. Cotton Mather's _Magnolia
+Christi Americana_, London, 1702 (reprinted in 1820 and 1853), though
+crude and uncritical, is full of interest.
+
+Many of the early Massachusetts documents relate to Maine. Of later
+books, especial mention should be made of Folsom's _History of Saco and
+Biddeford_, Saco, 1830; Willis's _History of Portland_, 2 vols., 1831-33
+(2d ed. 1865); _Memorial Volume of the Popham Celebration_, Portland,
+1862; Chamberlain's _Maine, Her Place in History_, Augusta, 1877. On New
+Hampshire the best general work is Belknap's _History of New Hampshire_,
+3 vols., Phila., 1784-92; the appendix contains many original
+documents, and others are to be found in the _New Hampshire Historical
+Collections_, 8 vols., 1824-66.
+
+The _Connecticut Colonial Records_ are edited by Dr. J.H. Trumbull,
+12 vols., 1850-82. The _Connecticut Historical Society's Collections_,
+1860-70, are of much value. The best general work is Trumbull's _History
+of Connecticut_, 2 vols., Hartford, 1797. See also Stiles's _Ancient
+Windsor_, 2 vols., 1859-63; Cothren's _Ancient Woodbury_, 3 vols.,
+1854-79. Of the Pequot War we have accounts by three of the principal
+actors. Mason's _History of the Pequod War_ is in the _Mass. Hist.
+Coll._, 2d series, vol. viii.; Underhill's _News from America_ is in the
+3d series, vol. vi.; and Lyon Gardiner's narrative is in the 3d series,
+vol. iii. In the same volume with Underhill is contained _A True
+Relation of the late Battle fought in New England between the English
+and the Pequod Savages_, by Philip Vincent, London, 1638. The _New Haven
+Colony Records_ are edited by C.J. Hoadly, 2 vols., Hartford, 1857-58.
+See also the _New Haven Historical Society's Papers_, 3 vols., 1865-80;
+Lambert's _History of New Haven_, 1838; Atwater's _History of New
+Haven_, 1881; Levermore's _Republic of New Haven_, Baltimore, 1886;
+Johnston's _Connecticut_, Boston, 1887. The best account of the Blue
+Laws is by J.H. Trumbull, _The True Blue Laws of Connecticut and New
+Haven, and the False Blue Laws invented by the Rev. Samuel Peters_,
+etc., Hartford, 1876. See also Hinman's _Blue Laws of New Haven Colony_,
+Hartford, 1838; Barber's _History and Antiquities of New Haven_, 1831;
+Peters's _History of Connecticut_, London, 1781. The story of the
+regicides is set forth in Stiles's _History of the Three Judges_ [the
+third being Colonel Dixwell], Hartford, 1794; see also the _Mather
+Papers_ in _Mass. Hist. Coll._, 4th series, vol. viii.
+
+_The Rhode Island Colonial Records_ are edited by J.R. Bartlett, 7
+vols., 1856-62. One of the best state histories ever written is that
+of S.G. Arnold, _History of the State of Rhode Island and Providence
+Plantations_, 2 vols., New York, 1859-60. Many valuable documents are
+reprinted in the _Rhode Island Historical Society's Collections_. The
+_History of New England, with particular reference to the denomination
+called Baptists_, by Rev. Isaac Backus, 3 vols., 1777-96, has much
+that is valuable relating to Rhode Island. The series of _Rhode Island
+Historical Tracts_, issued since 1878 by Mr. S.S. Rider, is of great
+merit. Biographies of Roger Williams have been written by J.D. Knowles,
+1834; by William Gammell, 1845; and by Romeo Elton, 1852. Williams's
+works have been republished by the Narragansett Club in 6 vols., 1866.
+The first volume contains the valuable _Key to the Indian Languages of
+America_, edited by Dr. Trumbull. Williams's views of religious liberty
+are set forth in his _Bloudy Tenent of Persecution_, London, 1644; to
+which John Cotton replied in _The Bloudy Tenent washed and made White in
+the Blood of the Lamb_, London, 1647; Williams's rejoinder was entitled
+_The Bloudy Tenent made yet more Bloudy through Mr. Cotton's attempt
+to Wash it White_, London, 1652. The controversy was conducted on both
+sides with a candour and courtesy rare in that age. The titles of
+Williams's other principal works, _George Fox digged out of his
+Burrowes_, Boston, 1676; _Hireling Ministry none of Christ's_, London,
+1652; and _Christenings make not Christians_, 1643; sufficiently
+indicate their character. The last-named tract was discovered in the
+British Museum by Dr. Dexter and edited by him in Rider's _Tracts_,
+No. xiv., 1881. The treatment of Roger Williams by the government
+of Massachusetts is thoroughly discussed in Dexter's _As to Roger
+Williams_, Boston, 1876. See also G.E. Ellis on "The Treatment of
+Intruders and Dissentients by the Founders of Massachusetts," in _Lowell
+Lectures_, Boston, 1869.
+
+The case of Mrs. Hutchinson is treated, from a hostile and somewhat
+truculent point of view, in Thomas Welde's pamphlet entitled _A Short
+Story of the Rise, Reign, and Ruin of Antinomians, Familists, and
+Libertines that infected the Churches of New England_, London, 1644. It
+was answered in an anonymous pamphlet entitled _Mercurius Americanus_,
+republished for the Prince Society, Boston, 1876, with prefatory notice
+by C.H. Bell. Cotton's view of the theocracy may be seen in his _Milk
+for Babes, drawn out of the Breasts of both Testaments_, London, 1646;
+_Keyes of the Kingdom of Heaven_; and _Way of the Congregational
+Churches Cleared_, London, 1648. See also Thomas Hooker's _Survey of the
+Summe of Church Discipline_, London, 1648. The intolerant spirit of the
+time finds quaint and forcible expression in Nathaniel Ward's satirical
+book, _The Simple Cobbler of Aggawam_, 1647.
+
+For the Gorton controversy the best original authorities are his own
+book entitled _Simplicitie's Defence against Sevenheaded Polity_,
+London, 1646; and Winslow's answer entitled _Hypocracie Unmasked_,
+London, 1646. See also Mackie's _Life of Samuel Gorton_, Boston, 1845,
+and Brayton's _Defence of Samuel Gorton_, in Rider's _Tracts_, No. xvii.
+
+For the early history of the Quakers, see Robert Barclay's _Inner Life
+of the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth_, London, 1876,--an
+admirable book. See also _New England a Degenerate Plant_, 1659;
+Bishop's _New England judged by the Spirit of the Lord_, 1661; Sewel's
+_History of the Quakers_, 1722; Besse's _Sufferings of the Quakers_,
+1753; _The Popish Inquisition newly erected in New England_, London,
+1659; _The Secret Works of a Cruel People made Manifest_, 1659; and the
+pamphlet of the martyrs Stevenson and Robinson, entitled _A Call from
+Death to Life_, 1660. John Norton's view of the case was presented in
+his book, _The Heart of New England Rent at the Blasphemies of the
+Present Generation_, London, 1660. See also J.S. Pike's _New Puritan_,
+New York, 1879; Hallowell's _Pioneer Quakers_, Boston, 1887; and his
+_Quaker Invasion of Massachusetts_, Boston, 1883; Brooks Adams, _The
+Emancipation of Massachusetts_, Boston, 1887; Ellis, _The Puritan Age
+and Rule_, Boston, 1888.
+
+Some additional light upon the theocratic idea may be found in a
+treatise by the apostle Eliot, _The Christian Commonwealth; or, the
+Civil Polity of the Rising Kingdom of Jesus Christ_, London, 1659. An
+account of Eliot's missionary work is given in _The Day breaking, if not
+the Sun rising, of the Gospel with the Indians in New England_, London,
+1647; and _The Glorious Progress of the Gospel amongst the Indians in
+New England_, 1649. See also Shepard's _Clear Sunshine of the Gospel
+breaking forth upon the Indians_, 1648; and Whitfield's _Light appearing
+more and more towards the Perfect Day_, 1651.
+
+The principal authority for Philip's war is Hubbard's _Present State of
+New England, being a Narrative of the Troubles with the Indians_, 1677.
+Church's _Entertaining Passages relating to Philip's War_, published in
+1716, and republished in 1865, with notes by Mr. Dexter, is a charming
+book. See also Mrs. Rowlandson's _True History_, Cambridge, Mass.,
+1682; Mather's _Brief History of the War_, 1676; Drake's _Old Indian
+Chronicle_, Boston, 1836; Gookin's _Historical Collections of the
+Indians in New England_, 1674; and _Account of the Doings and Sufferings
+of the Christian Indians_, in _Archchaeologia Americana_, vol. ii.
+Batten's _Journal_ is the diary of a citizen of Boston, sent to England,
+and it now in MS. among the _Colonial Papers_. Mrs. Mary Pray's letter
+(Oct. 20, 1675) is in _Mass. Hist. Coll._, 5th series, vol. i. p. 105.
+
+The great storehouse of information for the Andros period is the _Andros
+Tracts_, 3 vols., edited for the Prince Society by W.H. Whitmore. See
+also Sewall's _Diary, Mass. Hist. Coll._, 5th series, vols. v.--viii.
+Sewall has been appropriately called the Puritan Pepys. His book is a
+mirror of the state of society in Massachusetts at the time when it was
+beginning to be felt that the old theocratic idea had been tried in the
+balance and found wanting. There is a wonderful charm in such a book. It
+makes one feel as if one had really "been there" and taken part in the
+homely scenes, full of human interest, which it so naively portrays.
+Anne Bradstreet's works have been edited by J.H. Ellis, Charlestown,
+1867.
+
+For further references and elaborate bibliographical discussions, see
+Winsor's _Narrative and Critical History of America_, vol. iii.; and his
+_Memorial History of Boston_, 4 vols., Boston, 1880. There is a good
+account of the principal New England writers of the seventeenth century,
+with illustrative extracts, in Tyler's _History of American Literature_,
+2 vols., New York, 1878. For extracts see also the first two volumes of
+Stedman and Hutchinson's _Library of American Literature_, New York,
+1888.
+
+In conclusion I would observe that town histories, though seldom written
+in a philosophical spirit and apt to be quite amorphous in structure,
+are a mine of wealth for the philosophic student of history.
+
+
+
+
+NOTES:
+
+
+[1] Milman, _Lat. Christ._ vii. 395.
+
+[2] Gardiner, _The Puritan Revolution_, p. 12.
+
+[3] Green, _History of the English People_, iii. 47.
+
+[4] Steele's _Life of Brewster,_ p. 161.
+
+[5] Gardiner, _Puritan Revolution_, p. 50.
+
+[6] It is now 204 years since a battle has been fought in England. The
+last was Sedgmoor in 1685. For four centuries, since Bosworth, in 1485,
+the English people have lived in peace in their own homes, except for
+the brief episode of the Great Rebellion, and Monmouth's slight affair.
+This long peace, unparalleled in history, has powerfully influenced the
+English and American character for good. Since the Middle Ages most
+English warfare has been warfare at a distance, and that does not
+nourish the brutal passions in the way that warfare at home does.
+An instructive result is to be seen in the mildness of temper which
+characterized the conduct of our stupendous Civil War. Nothing like it
+was ever seen before.
+
+[7] Picton's _Cromwell_, pp. 61, 67; Gardiner, _Puritan Revolution_, p.
+72.
+
+[8] Quincy, History of Harvard University, ii. 654.
+
+[9] C.F. Adams, _Sir Christopher Gardiner, Knight_, p. 31.
+
+[10] The compact drawn up in the Mayflower's cabin was not, in the
+strict sense a constitution, which is a document defining and limiting
+the functions of government. Magna Charta partook of the nature of
+a written constitution, as far as it went, but it did not create a
+government.
+
+[11] See Johnston's Connecticut, p. 321, a very brilliant book.
+
+[12] See the passionate exclamation of Endicott, below, p. 190.
+
+[13] Excursions of an Evolutionist: pp. 250, 255.
+
+[14] A glimmer of light upon Gorton may be got from reading the
+title-page of one of his books: "AN INCORRUPTIBLE KEY, composed of the
+CX PSALME, wherewith you may open the Rest of the Holy Scriptures;
+Turning itself only according to the Composure and Art of that Lock, of
+the Closure and Secresie of that great Mystery of God manifest in the
+Flesh, but justified only by the Spirit, which it evidently openeth
+and revealeth, out of Fall and Resurrection, Sin and Righteousness,
+Ascension and Descension, Height and Depth, First and Last, Beginning
+and Ending, Flesh and Spirit, Wisdome and Foolishnesse, Strength
+and Weakness, Mortality and Immortality, Jew and Gentile, Light and
+Darknesse, Unity and Multiplication, Fruitfulness and Barrenness, Curse
+and Blessing, Man and Woman, Kingdom and Priesthood, Heaven and Earth,
+Allsufficiency and Deficiency, God and Man. And out of every Unity made
+up of twaine, it openeth that great two-leafed Gate, which is the sole
+Entrie into the City of God, of New Jerusalem, _into which none but the
+King of glory can enter_; and as that Porter openeth the Doore of the
+Sheepfold, _by which whosoever entreth is the Shepheard of the Sheep_;
+See Isa. 45. 1. Psal. 24. 7, 8, 9, 10. John 10. 1, 2, 3; Or, (according
+to the Signification of the Word translated _Psalme_,) it is a
+Pruning-Knife, to lop off from the Church of Christ all superfluous
+Twigs _of earthly and carnal Commandments_, Leviticall Services or
+Ministery, and fading and vanishing Priests, or Ministers, who are taken
+away and cease, and are not established and confirmed by Death, as
+holding no Correspondency with the princely Dignity, Office, and
+Ministry of our _Melchisedek_, who is the only Minister and Ministry of
+the Sanctuary, and of that true Tabernacle which the Lord pitcht, and
+not Man. For it supplants the Old Man, and implants the New; abrogates
+the Old Testament or Covenant, and confirms the New, unto a thousand
+Generations, or in Generations forever. By Samuel Gorton, _Gent._,
+and at the time of penning hereof, in the Place of Judicature (upon
+Aquethneck, alias Road Island) of Providence Plantations in the
+Nanhyganset Bay, New England. Printed in the Yeere 1647."
+
+[15] Father of Benedict Arnold, afterward governor of Rhode Island, and
+owner of the stone windmill (apparently copied from one in Chesterton,
+Warwickshire) which was formerly supposed by some antiquarians to be a
+vestige of the Northmen. Governor Benedict Arnold was great-grandfather
+of the traitor.
+
+[16] _Gorton, Simplicitie's Defence against Seven-headed Policy_, p. 88.
+
+[17] De Forest, _History of the Indians of Connecticut_, Hartford, 1850,
+p. 198.
+
+[18] Doyle, _Puritan Colonies_, i. 324.
+
+[19] See below, p. 222, note.
+
+[20] See my _Excursions of an Evolutionist,_ pp. 239-242, 250-255,
+286-289.
+
+[21] Gorton's life at Warwick, after all these troubles, seems to have
+been quiet and happy. He died in 1677 at a great age. In 1771 Dr. Ezra
+Stiles visited, in Providence, his last surviving disciple, born in
+1691. This old man said that Gorton wrote in heaven, and none can
+understand his books except those who live in heaven while on earth.
+
+[22] Doyle, _Puritan Colonies_,: i. 369.
+
+[23] Doyle, i.: 372.
+
+[24] Milman, _Latin Christianity_, vii. 390.
+
+[25] Doyle, ii. 133, 134; Rhode Island Records, i. 377, 378.
+
+[26] Colonial Laws of Massachusetts, pp. 14-16; Levermore's Republic of
+New Haven, p. 153.
+
+[27] See my remarks above, p. 145.
+
+[28] The daring passage in the sermon is thus given in Bacon's
+_Historical Discourses_, New Haven, 1838: "Withhold not countenance,
+entertainment, and protection from the people of God--whom men may call
+fools and fanatics--if any such come to you from other countries,
+as from France or England, or any other place. Be not forgetful to
+entertain strangers. Remember those that are in bonds, as bound with
+them. The Lord required this of Moab, saying, 'Make thy shadow as the
+night in the midst of the noonday; hide the outcasts; bewray not him
+that wandereth. Let mine outcasts dwell with thee, Moab; be thou a
+covert to them from the face of the spoiler.' Is it objected--'But so I
+may expose myself to be spoiled or troubled'? He, therefore, to remove
+this objection, addeth, 'For the extortioner is at an end, the spoiler
+ceaseth, the oppressors are consumed out of the land.' While we are
+attending to our duty in owning and harbouring Christ's witnesses, God
+will be providing for their and our safety, by destroying those that
+would destroy his people."
+
+[29] Palfrey, _History of New England,_ in. 138-140.
+
+[30] See Parkman, _Conspiracy of Pontiac_, i. 80-85.
+
+[31] De Forest, _History of the Indians of Connecticut,_ pp. 252, 257.
+
+[32] The story rests chiefly upon the statements of Hutchinson, an
+extremely careful and judicious writer, and not in the least what
+the French call a _gobemouche_. Goffe kept a diary which came into
+Hutchinson's possession, and was one of the priceless manuscripts that
+perished in the infamous sacking of his house by the Boston mob of
+August 26, 1765. What light that diary might have thrown upon the matter
+can never be known. Hutchinson was born in 1711, only thirty-six years
+after the event, so that his testimony is not so very far removed from
+that of a contemporary. Whalley seems to have died in Hadley shortly
+before 1675, and Goffe deemed it prudent to leave that neighbourhood in
+1676. His letters to Increase Mather are dated from "Ebenezer," i. e.,
+wherever in his roamings he set up his Ebenezer. One of these letters,
+dated September 8, 1676, shows that his Ebenezer was then set up in
+Hartford, where probably he died about 1679 In 1676 the arrival of
+Edward Randolph (see below, p. 256) renewed the peril of the regicide
+judge, and his sudden removal from his skilfully contrived hiding-place
+at Hadley might possibly have been due to his having exposed himself
+to recognition in the Indian fight. Possibly even the supernatural
+explanation might have been started, with a touch of Yankee humour, as
+a blind. The silence of Mather and Hubbard was no more remarkable than
+some of the other ingenious incidents which had so long served to
+conceal the existence of this sturdy and crafty man. The reasons for
+doubting the story are best stated by Mr. George Sheldon of Deerfield,
+in _Hist.-Genealogical Register_, October, 1874.
+
+[33] If Philip was half the diplomatist that he is represented in
+tradition, he never would have gone into such a war without assurance of
+Narragansett help. Canonchet was a far more powerful sachem than Philip,
+and played a more conspicuous part in the war. May we not suppose that
+Canonchet's desire to avenge his father's death was one of the principal
+incentives to the war; that Philip's attack upon Swanzey was a premature
+explosion; and that Canonchet then watched the course of events for a
+while before making up his mind whether to abandon Philip or support
+him?
+
+[34] A wretched little werewolf who some few years ago, being then a lad
+of fourteen or fifteen years, most cruelly murdered two or three
+young children, just to amuse himself with their dying agonies. The
+misdirected "humanitarianism," which in our country makes every murderer
+an object of popular sympathy, prevailed to save this creature from
+the gallows. Massachusetts has lately witnessed a similar instance of
+misplaced clemency in the case of a vile woman who had poisoned eight or
+ten persons, including some of her own children, in order to profit
+by their life insurance. Such instances help to explain the prolonged
+vitality of "Judge Lynch," and sometimes almost make one regret the days
+in old England when William Probert, after escaping in 1824 as "king's
+evidence," from the Thurtell affair, got caught and hanged within a
+twelvemonth for horse-stealing. Any one who wishes to study the results
+of allowing criminality to survive and propagate itself should read
+Dugdale's The Jukes; Hereditary Crime, New York, 1877.
+
+[35] Weeden, _Indian Money as a Factor in New England Civilization_,
+Johns Hopkins University Studies, II. viii., ix. p. 30.
+
+[36] Doyle, ii. 253.
+
+[37] Doyle, _Puritan Colonies_, ii. 254.
+
+[38] The quotation is from an unpublished letter of Rev. Robert
+Ratcliffe to the Bishop of London, cited in an able article in the
+_Boston Herald_, January 4, 1888. I have not seen the letter.
+
+[39] Doyle, _Puritan Colonies_, ii. 379, 380.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Beginnings of New England, by John Fiske
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12767 ***