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 ma.s.sacre 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 antic.i.p.ated 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 st.u.r.dy 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 pa.s.sengers had brought from Delft, they might have gone to the bottom.
The foul weather prevented any accurate calculation of lat.i.tude 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, antic.i.p.ating 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 ash.o.r.e 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 succ.u.mbed. 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 pa.s.sed. 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 a.s.sured. That the Indians in the neighbourhood had not taken advantage of the distress of the settlers in that first winter, and ma.s.sacred every one of them, was due to a remarkable circ.u.mstance. Early in 1617 a frightful pestilence had swept over New England and slain, it is thought, more than half the Indian population between the Pen.o.bscot 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 superst.i.tious 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 Ma.s.sasoit, princ.i.p.al 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 Ma.s.sasoit and King James, and the treaty was faithfully kept for half a century. Some time afterward, when Ma.s.sasoit 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 a.s.sociated. 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 a.s.sert its will in opposition to the crown. It is when we view the founding of Plymouth in relation to what came afterward, that it a.s.sumes 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 Ess.e.x he had contrived to save his own fortunes by a course of treachery and ingrat.i.tude. 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 doc.u.ment 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 lat.i.tude 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 a.s.sociated 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 sh.o.r.es of Ma.s.sachusetts 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 t.i.tle-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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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 G.o.ddes Flora, or the beastly practices of ye madd Bacha.n.a.lians." 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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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 a.s.signments 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 mult.i.tude of rude ungovernable persons, the very sc.u.m 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 Roch.e.l.le 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 a.s.sociation 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 n.o.ble 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 a.s.sociation 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 t.i.tle 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 Ma.s.sachusetts, 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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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 Ma.s.sachusetts Bay in New England. The affairs of this corporate body were to be managed by a governor, deputy-governor, and a council of eighteen a.s.sistants, 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 lat.i.tude 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 princ.i.p.al 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 a.s.sociated 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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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 Pet.i.tion of Right had been Pa.s.sed by both Houses, and the royal answer had just been received. Its tone was that of gracious a.s.sent, 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 pet.i.tion 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 antic.i.p.ation 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 const.i.tutional 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 pa.s.sed 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 c.o.ke 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 a.s.sent to the Pet.i.tion 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 n.o.ble 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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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 Roch.e.l.le 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 pa.s.s before the immortal Gustavus was to cross the Baltic and give to the sorely hara.s.sed cause of liberty a fresh lease of life. The news of the cruel Edict of Rest.i.tution 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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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 n.o.blest 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 a.s.sociated 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 G.o.d in courts and churches watch O"er such as do a Toleration hatch, Lest that ill egg bring forth a c.o.c.katrice 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 pa.s.sengers. 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 a.s.sert 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 sh.o.r.es 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 a.s.sessed 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 a.s.sessed by the Board of a.s.sistants, on the ground that English freemen cannot rightfully be taxed save by their own consent.
This protest led to a change in the const.i.tution of the infant colony, and here, at once, we are introduced to the beginnings of American const.i.tutional history. At first it was thought that public business could be transacted by a primary a.s.sembly 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 a.s.sistants; and in May, 1631, it was further decided that the a.s.sistants 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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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 a.s.sembly and an a.s.sembly of notables. It is curious to see Englishmen pa.s.sing 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 a.s.sistants; while the power of choosing each year the governor and a.s.sistants 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 a.s.sistants, but at length in 1644 they were formed into a second chamber with increased powers, and the way in which this important const.i.tutional change came about is worth remembering, as an ill.u.s.tration 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sess 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 a.s.sistants and eight deputies approved the former decisions, two a.s.sistants and fifteen deputies condemned them, while seven deputies refrained from voting. In other words, Captain Keayne has a decided majority among the more aristocratic a.s.sistants, 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 a.s.sistants. 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 const.i.tuted 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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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 ill.u.s.trating 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 Ma.s.sachusetts Company had so far prospered that nearly 4000 Englishmen had come over, and some twenty villages on or near the sh.o.r.es 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.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Founding of Harvard College]
It has been said that the a.s.sembly 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 circ.u.mstances 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 ill.u.s.tration 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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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 st.u.r.dy 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 Ma.s.sachusetts. 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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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 n.o.blemen, 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 Ma.s.sachusetts Company.