Theophilus Eaton was a London merchant "of fair estate, and of great esteem for religion and wisdom in outward affairs." He was at one time an ambassador to the Danish court, and had been one of the original assistants of the Massachusetts Company, although not active in its affairs. John Davenport had been an ordained minister in London; he turned Puritan, and on his resignation in 1633 went to Holland. These two men formed a congregation, composed for the most part of middle-class Londoners, who resolved to migrate to America, there to set up a State founded on scriptural models. The Plymouth and Massachusetts men had started out with this same idea; but as the result of circumstances, had made compromises which Eaton and Davenport could not countenance.
In July, 1637, the two leaders arrived in Boston with a small company of their disciples, among whom were several men of wealth and good social position, but extremely narrow and bigoted in religious faith. They have been styled the Brahmins of New England Puritanism. They did not deem it practicable to settle in Massachusetts, and the following spring (March, 1638) sailed to Long Island Sound and established an independent settlement on the site of New Haven, thirty miles west of the Connecticut river. For a year their only bond of union was a "plantation covenant" to obey the Scriptures in all things.
In October, 1639, there was adopted a constitution, in the making of which Davenport had the chief hand. The governor and four magistrates were to be elected by the freemen, who were, as in Massachusetts, church members; trial by jury was rejected, because it lacked scriptural authority; and it was formally declared "that the Word of God shall be the only rule attended unto in ordering the affairs of government." Eaton was chosen governor, and held the office by annual election until his death, twenty years later.
The neighborhood of New Haven was soon settled by other immigrants, most of whom were also strict constructionists of the Scriptures, while a few others were as liberal in their ideas as the people of the Connecticut valley. Guilford was established (1639) seventeen miles to the north, and Milford (1639) eleven miles westward; Stamford (1640), well on towards New York, followed, while Southold was boldly planted (1640) on Long Island, opposite Guilford, in territory claimed by the Dutch. As each town was as well a church, these were for some years little independent communities, founded on the New Haven model. In 1643, however, they formed a union with New Haven, and a system of representation was introduced. Each town sent up deputies to the General Court, in which also sat the governor, deputy-governor, and assistants, elected by the whole body of freemen; yet a majority of either the deputies or the magistrates might veto a measure. Local magistrates—seven to each town, known as "pillars of the church"—tried petty cases, but important suits were passed upon by the assistants. The "seven pillars" were the autocrats of their several towns, and colonial affairs were also practically in the hands of the select few who controlled the church.
At the meeting of the General Court in April, 1644, the magistrates in the confederation were ordered to observe "the judicial laws of God as they were delivered by Moses." This injunction afterwards gave rise to an absurd report, circulated in 1781 by Rev. Samuel Peters, a Tory refugee, that the New Haven statutes were of peculiar quaintness and severity. For nearly one hundred years Peters's fable of the New Haven Blue Laws was accepted as historic truth.
At first, New Haven failed to prosper; but after a few years, with the increase of trade, better times prevailed, and by the close of the century the town was noted for the wealth of its inhabitants and their fine houses. Education was greatly encouraged, and there were considerable shipping interests; but the ecclesiastical system was peculiar, and suffrage greatly restricted. There were, in consequence, frequent outbursts of dissatisfaction among the people. The colony thus had conspicuous elements of weakness, and was finally absorbed by Connecticut.
60. Rhode Island founded (1636-1654).
In 1636, with five of his disciples, Roger Williams, driven from Massachusetts as a reformer of a dangerous type, established the town of Providence, at the head of Narragansett Bay.
The following year (1637) a party of Anne Hutchinson's followers—also expelled from Massachusetts because of heretical opinions—settled on the island of Aquedneck (afterwards Rhode Island), eighteen miles to the south. Mrs. Hutchinson joined them in 1638, and the town was eventually called Portsmouth.
Both communities at once attracted from Massachusetts people who had either been expelled from that colony or were not in entire harmony with it, and by the close of 1638 Providence contained sixty persons, and Portsmouth nearly as many. The next year fifty-nine of the Portsmouth people, headed by the chief magistrate, Coddington, dissenting from some of Mrs. Hutchinson's "new heresies," withdrew to the southern end of the island and settled Newport; but the two towns reunited in 1640, under the name of Rhode Island, with Coddington as governor.
Each of these colonies, Providence and Rhode Island, was at first an independent body politic. It is interesting to note their original compacts. The Providence agreement (1636), signed by Roger Williams and twelve of his sympathizers, was as follows: "We whose names are hereunder, desirous to inhabit in the Town of Providence, do promise to subject ourselves in active or passive obedience to all such orders or agreements as shall be made for the public good of the body, in an orderly way, by the major assent of the present inhabitants, masters of families, incorporated together into a town fellowship, and such others whom they shall admit unto them, only in civil things." Five freemen, called arbitrators, managed public affairs, and for some years there appear to have been no fixed rules for their guidance.
At Portsmouth the people united in the following declaration: "We do here solemnly, in the presence of Jehovah, incorporate ourselves into a body politic, and as He shall help will submit our persons, lives, and estates unto our Lord Jesus Christ, the King of kings and Lord of lords, and to all those perfect and most absolute laws of His, given us in His holy words of truth, to be guided and judged thereby." The freemen conducted public affairs in town meeting, with a secretary, a clerk, and a chief magistrate. Newport was similarly organized; but when Newport and Portsmouth reunited, a more complex government was instituted. A General Court was then established, in which sat the governor, the deputy-governor, and four assistants,—one town choosing the governor and two of the assistants, and the other the deputy-governor and the remaining assistants; the freemen composed the body of the court, and settled even the most trivial cases. In 1641 it was declared that "it is in the power of the body of the freemen orderly assembled, or the part of them, to make and constitute just laws by which they shall be regulated, and to depute from among themselves such ministers as shall see them faithfully executed between man and man." At the same session an order was adopted "that none be accounted a delinquent for doctrine, provided it be not directly repugnant to the government or laws established."
By the other colonies Providence and Rhode Island were deemed hot-beds of anarchy. Persons holding all manner of Protestant theological notions flocked thither in considerable numbers, and it is true that for many years there were hot contentions between them, often to the disturbance of public order. Despite these years of bickerings, Providence and Rhode Island prospered.
Through the exertions of Roger Williams, Providence, Portsmouth, and Newport, with a new town called Warwick were united under one charter (1644), as the colony of Providence Plantations. This liberal document, issued by the Parliamentary Committee on the Colonies, gave to the inhabitants along Narragansett Bay authority to rule themselves "by such form of civil government as by the voluntary consent of all or the greatest part of them shall be found most serviceable to their estate and condition." Larger power could not have been wished for. By a curious provision, adopted in 1647, a law had to be proposed at the General Court; it was then sent round to the towns for the freemen to pass upon it, thus giving the voters a voice in the conduct of affairs, without the necessity of attending court. A majority of freemen in any one town could defeat the measure. A code of laws resembling the common laws of England, and with few references to biblical precedents, passed safely through the ordeal in 1647; one important section provided that "all men may walk as their conscience persuades them."
The following year Coddington, as the head of a faction, obtained a separate charter for Newport and Portsmouth,—much to the disgust of many of the inhabitants of those as well as of the other towns. A bitter feud lasted until 1654, when Williams once more appeared as peacemaker and secured the reunion of all the towns under the general charter of 1644, with himself as president. The old law code was restored.
Rhode Island was founded by a religious outcast, and always remained as an asylum for those sectaries who could find no home elsewhere. The purpose was noble, and Williams persisted in his policy, despite the fact that life was often made uncomfortable for him by his ill-assorted fellow-colonists, who were continually bickering with each other. Throughout the seventeenth century Rhode Island was a hot-bed of disorder. Fanaticism not only expressed itself in religion, but in politics and society; and no scheme was so wild as to find no adherents in this confused medley. The condition of the colony served as a warning to its neighbors, seeming to confirm the wisdom of their theocratic methods.
61. Maine founded (1622-1658).
Sir Ferdinando Gorges, governor of Plymouth in England, became interested in New England, we have seen, as early as 1605. Ten years later he assisted John Smith in organizing an unsuccessful voyage to the northern coast; in 1620 we find him a member of the council of the Plymouth Company; in 1622 he and John Mason (not the hero of the Pequod war), both of them Churchmen and strong friends of the king, obtained a grant of the country lying between the Merrimack and Kennebec Rivers; and it was Gorges who sent out Maverick to settle on Noddle's Island, and Blackstone to hold the Boston peninsula. Later (1629), Mason obtained an individual grant from the Plymouth Council of the territory between the Merrimack and the Piscataqua (New Hampshire), and Gorges that from the Piscataqua to the Kennebec (Maine); these grants were similar in character to the charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company. When the Plymouth Company threw up its charter in 1634, and New England was parcelled out (1635) among the members of the council, Gorges and Mason secured a confirmation of their former personal grants. Mason died a few months later, leaving the settlements in his tract to be annexed to Massachusetts in 1641.
In April, 1639, Gorges obtained a provincial charter from the king, conferring upon him the title of Lord Proprietor of the Province or County of Maine, his domain to extend, as before, from the Kennebec to the Piscataqua, and backward one hundred and twenty miles from the coast. He received almost absolute authority over the people of his province, who were then but three hundred in number. Saco, established by him about the year 1623, was the principal settlement, and contained one half of the population; while a half-dozen smaller hamlets, chiefly of his creation, were scattered along the neighboring shore, inhabited by fishermen, hunters, and traders. The greater part of these people were adherents of the king and the Established Church. Notwithstanding Gorges's long-sustained effort to attract men of wealth to his plantations, the province was not as flourishing as its neighbors to the south.
Gorges amused his old age by drafting a cumbrous Constitution for his people. He was to make laws in conjunction with the freemen; the laws of England were to prevail in cases not covered by the statutes; the Church of England was to be the State religion; all Englishmen were to be allowed fishing privileges; the proprietor was to establish manorial courts; and he was also empowered, of his own motion, to levy taxes, raise troops, and declare war. In examining the official machinery which Gorges sought to erect in Maine, we are reminded of Locke's constitution for the Carolinas; the proprietor was to be represented by a deputy-governor, under whom was to be a long line of officers with high-sounding titles, these to form the council; with them were to meet the deputies selected by the freeholders. The provinces were to be cut up into bailiwicks or counties, hundreds, parishes, and tithings; justice in each bailiwick was to be administered by a lieutenant and eight magistrates, the nominees of the proprietor or his deputy, and under each was a staff of minor functionaries. There were almost enough officers provided for in Gorges's plan to give every one of his subjects a public position.
The proprietor himself never visited America; he was represented by his son Thomas as deputy-governor. It was impossible for the latter, however, to carry all of his father's plans into effect, and gradually the province sank into disorder and neglect. Its towns were finally absorbed by Massachusetts (1652-1658).
The settlers brought out to people Maine were the servants of individuals or companies having a tract of land to be occupied and cultivated, fisheries to conduct, and fur-trade to prosecute. They did not come to found a church or build a state, and such institutions as they developed were the immediate outcome of their necessities. They had little sympathy or communication with their neighbors of Massachusetts and Plymouth.
62. New Hampshire founded (1620-1685).
We have seen that John Mason was given a grant in 1629 of the country between the Merrimack and the Piscataqua. In his scheme for colonizing the tract, Gorges was associated with him. But David Thomson and three Plymouth fur-traders had already gained a footing at Rye in 1622, under a grant from the Plymouth Council. Dover had been founded before 1628 by the brothers Hilton, Puritan fish-dealers in London; and some of Mrs. Hutchinson's adherents, exiles from Massachusetts, founded Exeter and Hampton. In 1630 Neal, as colonizing agent of Mason and Gorges, settled at Portsmouth, on the Piscataqua, with a large party of farmers and fishermen, all of them Church of England men; and it is probable that this colony absorbed the neighboring settlement at Rye. By the time the proprietors dissolved partnership in 1635 (page 150), considerable property had been accumulated by them here, as in the inventory of their possessions at Portsmouth we find twenty-two cannons, two hundred and fifty small-arms, forty-eight fishing-boats, forty horses, fifty-four goats, nearly two hundred sheep, and over a hundred cattle. This argues a large establishment. Upon the death of Mason, later in the year, the Piscataqua colony was left to its own guidance. All of the New Hampshire towns were from the first independent communities, governed much after the fashion of the other English towns to the south of them.
The beginnings of New Hampshire were the results of commercial enterprise in England and theological dissensions in Massachusetts. The inhabitants of the several towns had little in common, and held different political and religious views. Planted under various auspices, when they grew to importance they were the subject of long struggles for jurisdiction. It would be tiresome to trace the history of these disputes; suffice it to say that after many changes the settlements on or near the Piscataqua were (1641-1643) incorporated with Massachusetts, which ruled them with marked discretion, and refrained from meddling with their religious views. In 1679, as the result of disputes growing out of the revival of the Mason claim in England, New Hampshire was turned into a royal province, but in 1685 was reunited to Massachusetts. As to the character of the people of New Hampshire, what has been said in regard to those of Maine may in a great measure also be applied to them.
CHAPTER VII.
NEW ENGLAND FROM 1643 TO 1700.
Bibliographies.—Same as § 47, above; Avery, II., III.; Channing and Hart, Guide, §§ 124-128.
Historical Maps.—Same as § 47, above.
General Accounts.—Doyle, Colonies, II. chs. viii., ix., III. chs. i.-v.; Lodge, Colonies, 351-362, 375-380, 387-392, 398-400; Osgood, Colonies; Avery, II. chs. xiii.-xviii., III. chs. vii., viii., x.-xii., xix.-xxi.; G. Bancroft, I. 289-407, 574-613; Channing, United States, I. chs. xv., xviii., xix.; Hildreth, I. chs. x., xii., xiv.; Palfrey, New England, I. 269-408, III. 1-386; Fiske, Beginnings of New England; Hallowell, Quaker Invasion of Massachusetts; R. Frothingham, Rise of the Republic, chs. ii., iii.; A. MacLear, Early New England Towns; Winsor, Narrative and Critical, as in § 47.
Special Histories.—Consult the numerous local histories, some of them of much importance; Winsor's Boston, and Sheldon's Deerfield are examples.
Contemporary Accounts.—Sewall, Diary; Mather, Magnalia; Bishop, New England Judged; Hubbard, Trouble with the Indians.—Reprints in publications of colonial and town record commissions, historical and antiquarian societies, Prince Society, Gorges Society, etc.; Andros, Tracts; American History Leaflets, Nos. 7, 25, 29; Old South Leaflets; American History told by Contemporaries, I. ch. xx., II.
64. New England Confederation formed (1637-1643).
In the preceding chapter has been sketched the origin and planting of the New England colonies. Most of those colonies maintained a separate existence and had a history of their own during the rest of the seventeenth century. But the limits of this work do not permit a sketch of the local and internal history of each colony. In this chapter will therefore be considered only those events of common interest and having a significance in the development of all the colonies.
First in time and first in its consequences is the federation of the New England colonies, for which in August, 1637, the men of Connecticut made overtures to the Massachusetts General Court. Connecticut, as an outpost of English civilization in the heart of the Indian country and "over against the Dutch," had especial need of support from the older colonies to the east. The tribesmen were uneasy and the menaces of the Dutch at New Amsterdam were especially alarming. Twice had the doughty Hollanders endeavored to drive English settlers from the Connecticut valley and recover their lost fur-trade there; both attempts had been failures, but it seemed likely that in time the Dutch might summon sufficient strength to make it more difficult to withstand them. Again, the French, who had settled at Quebec in 1608, were beginning to push the confines of New France southward; and there had been trouble with them at various times for several years, the outgrowth of boundary disputes and race hatred. The Connecticut and Hudson rivers were highways quite familiar to the French Canadians and their Indian allies, and the Connecticut colonists were apprehensive of partisan raids overland from the north, which they could not hope to repel single-handed.
The proposition for union was renewed in 1639, and again in September, 1642. At first Massachusetts was indifferent; but finally "the ill news we had out of England concerning the breach between the king and Parliament" appears to have caused her statesmen to look favorably on the project. Affairs were at such a pass in the mother-country that it behooved Englishmen in America to be prepared to act on the defensive in the event of the war-cloud drifting in their direction. Should the king win, there was reason to believe that he would speedily turn his attention towards the correction of New England, which had long been to dissenting Englishmen in the mother-land an object-lesson in political independence and a ready refuge in time of danger.
In May, 1643, twelve articles were agreed upon at Boston between the representatives of Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven. Winthrop tells us that the representatives "coming to consultation encountered some difficulties, but being all desirous of union and studious of peace, they readily yielded each to other in such things as tended to common utility." Compromises were the foundation of this as well as of later American constitutions.
The four colonies were bound together by a formal written constitution, under the name of "The United Colonies of New England," in "a firm and perpetual league of friendship and amity for offence and defence, mutual advice and succor, upon all just occasions, both for preserving and propagating the truth and liberties of the Gospel, and for their own mutual safety and welfare." Each colony was allowed to manage its internal affairs; but a body of eight federal commissioners, two from each colony, and all of them church members, were empowered to "determine all affairs of war or peace, leagues, aids, charges, and numbers of men for war, division of spoils and whatsoever was gotten by conquest, receiving of more confederates for plantations into combination with any of the confederates, and all things of like nature which were the proper concomitants or consequents of such a confederation for amity, offence, and defence." Six commissioners formed a working majority of the board; but in case of disagreement, the question at issue was to be sent to the legislatures of the several colonies for decision. War expenses were to be levied against each colony in proportion to its male population between the ages of sixteen and sixty. The board was to meet at least once a year, and oftener when necessary. The president of the commissioners, chosen from their own number, was to be "invested with no power or respect" except that of a presiding officer.
65. Workings of the Confederation (1643-1660).
The league which it represented is "interesting as the first American experiment in federation;" but it had one fertile source of weakness. There were in the four colonies represented an aggregate population of about twenty-four thousand, of which Massachusetts contained fifteen thousand, the other three having not more than three thousand each. In case of war Massachusetts agreed to send one hundred men for every forty-five furnished by each of her colleagues. In two ways she bore the heaviest burden,—in the number of men sent to war, and in the amount of taxes levied therefor. As each colony was to have an equal vote in the conduct of the league, Massachusetts was placed at a disadvantage. She frequently endeavored to exercise larger power than was allowed her under the articles, thus arousing the enmity of the smaller colonies, and endangering the existence of the union.
Nevertheless, during the twenty years in which the confederation was the strongest political power on the continent of North America, Massachusetts maintained control of its general policy. Maine and the settlements along Narragansett Bay in vain made application to join the confederation. It was objected that public order was not established in Rhode Island, and moreover the oath taken by the freemen there bespoke fealty to the English king. As for Maine, its proprietor, Gorges, was enlisted on the side of the monarch, and the political system in vogue in his province differed from that in the other colonies.
The board was little more than a committee of public safety; it acted upon the colonial legislatures, and not on the individual colonists, and had no power to enforce its decrees. One of its early interests was the building up of Harvard College; and at its request there was taken up, throughout the four colonies, a contribution of "corn for the poor scholars in Cambridge."
In the articles of confederation there was no reference whatever to the home government. The New Englanders had taken charge of their own affairs, apparently without a thought of the supremacy of either king or parliament. The spirit of local independence among these people was greater than national patriotism. With Laud in prison and the king an outcast, there could be no interference from that quarter, and Parliament was too busy just then to give much thought to the doings of the distant American colonists. In November (1643) Parliament instituted a commission for the government of the colonies, with the Earl of Warwick at its head; but it was of small avail so far as New England was concerned.
Massachusetts was ever in an attitude of jealousy towards even a suspicion of interference from England. In 1644 the General Court voted that any one attempting to raise soldiers for the king should be "accounted as an offender of an high nature against this commonwealth, and to be proceeded with, either capitally or otherwise, according to the quality and degree of his offence." The colony was, however, no more for the Commons than for the king. When, in 1651, Parliament desired that Massachusetts surrender her charter granted by King Charles and receive a new one at its hands, for a year no notice was taken of the command; when at last England had a war with Holland on her hands, the Massachusetts men evasively replied that they were quite satisfied "to live under the government of a governor and magistrates of their own choosing and under laws of their own making." The General Court was also bold enough to establish a colonial mint (1652), and for thirty years coined "pine-tree shillings," in the face of all objections. In 1653 Cromwell, always a firm friend to New England, was declared Lord Protector; yet Massachusetts did not allow the event to be proclaimed within her borders, and when he wished Massachusetts to help him in his war against the Dutch by capturing New Amsterdam, the colonial court somewhat haughtily "gave liberty to his Highness's commissioners" to raise volunteers in her territory. At the Restoration it was not until warning came from friends in England, that Charles II. was proclaimed in New England.
66. Disturbances in Rhode Island (1641-1647).
Over on Narragansett Bay the public peace continued to be disturbed by factious disputations. Because of the freedom there generously offered to all men, the settlements of Rhode Island and Providence were the harboring-place for dissenters of every class, who for the most part had been ordered to leave the other colonies. Many of these persons were of the Baptist faith, or held other theological views which would be considered sober enough in our day; but among them were numerous rank fanatics, whom no well-ordered society was calculated to please.
Some of Roger Williams's adherents had built Pawtuxet. To them came a band of fanatics, headed by Samuel Gorton, described by his orthodox neighbors as "a proud and pestilent seducer," of "insolent and riotous carriage," but who was by no means so black as they painted him. The Pawtuxet settlers asked Massachusetts (1641) "of gentle courtesy and for the preservation of humanity and mankind," to "lend a neighbor-like helping hand" and relieve them of the disturber. At the same time they secured the annexation of their town to Massachusetts, so that it might be within the jurisdiction of the latter. Gorton and nine of his followers were taken as prisoners to Boston (1643), where they were convicted of blasphemy, and after four or five months at hard labor were released, with threats of death if they did not at once depart from Massachusetts soil.
Gorton went to England (1646) and appealed to the parliamentary commissioners, who declared that he might "freely and quietly live and plant" upon his land which he had purchased from the Indians at Shawomet (Warwick), on the western shore of Narragansett Bay. Edward Winslow of Plymouth was now sent over (1647) to represent Massachusetts in the Gorton case; and through him the plea was entered that the commissioners, being far distant from America, should not undertake the decision of appeals from the colonies; and moreover, that the Massachusetts charter was an "absolute power of government." The commissioners, in return, protested that they "intended not to encourage any appeals from your justice;" nevertheless, they "commanded" the General Court to allow Gorton and his followers to dwell in peace; but "if they shall be faulty, we leave them to be proceeded with according to justice." The offender was allowed to return, but his presence was haughtily ignored; and when his settlement was threatened by Indians, he cited in vain the parliamentary order as a warrant for assistance.
67. Policy of the Confederation (1646-1660).
The sturdy and independent spirit of the colonists was expressed in words as well as in deeds. While Winslow was thus representing the colonists in England he made his famous reply to those who were disposed to criticise the formation of the New England confederacy as a presumptuous assertion of independence: "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." A similar impatience of authority from England was expressed by Governor John Winthrop. An opinion which he delivered about this time betokened the proud and independent attitude of Massachusetts, and was prophetic of the spirit of the Revolution. By a legal fiction, when the king granted land in America it was held as being in the manor of East Greenwich. It was said that the American colonists were represented in that body by the member returned from the borough containing this manor, and were therefore subject to Parliament. Winthrop held, however, that the supreme law in the colonies was the common weal, and should parliamentary authority endanger the welfare of the colonists, then they would be justified in ignoring that authority.
Religious liberty was quite as dear to the New England people as political liberty. In 1645, under Scottish influence, Presbyterianism was established by Act of Parliament as the state religion of England. Massachusetts was, however, stoutly Independent, and furnished some of the chief champions for that faith during the great controversy which was then raging between the two sects on both sides of the water. A number of Massachusetts Presbyterians sought (1646) to induce the home government to settle churches of their faith in the colonies, and to secure the franchise to all, regardless of religious affiliation; but before they reached England to state their case the Independents were again in the ascendent, and the Puritan theocracy in Massachusetts was undisturbed. Two years later (1648) a synod of churches was held at Cambridge, at which was formulated a church discipline familiarly styled "the Cambridge platform." In it the Westminster Confession was approved, the powers of the clergy defined, the civil power invoked to "coerce" churches which should "walk incorrigibly or obstinately in any corrupt way of their own," and the term "Congregational" established, to distinguish New England orthodoxy from "those corrupt sects and heresies which showed themselves under the vast title of Independency." In 1649 this platform was laid by the General Court before the several congregations, and two years later it was formally agreed to.
It was hardly to be supposed that a people so little inclined to acknowledge the rights of England should treat with greater respect those of Holland; and indeed they had the countenance of the home government in encroachments upon the Dutch colonies. In 1642 Boswell, who represented England at the Hague, advised his fellow-countrymen in New England to "put forward their plantations and crowd on, crowding the Dutch out of those places where they have occupied."
The New Englanders were not slow to adopt this aggressive policy. Settlements were pushed out westward from New Haven on the mainland, and southward on Long Island. Peter Stuyvesant, then governor of New Netherland, bitterly complained of these encroachments,—for the Dutch then claimed everything between the Connecticut and Delaware rivers,—and appealed to the federal commissioners to put a stop to them; but the answer came that the Dutch were selling arms and ammunition to the Indians, that their conduct was not conducive to peace, that they harbored criminals from the English colonies, and that the United Colonies proposed to "vindicate the English rights by all suitable and just means." Stuyvesant, who was a hot-headed man, would have liked to go to war with the New Englanders, but was informed by the Dutch West India Company that war "cannot in any event be to our advantage: the New England people are too powerful for us." The matter was finally (1651) left to arbitrators, who settled a provisional boundary line which "on the mainland was not to come within ten miles of the Hudson River," and which gave to Connecticut the greater part of Long Island.
War broke out between England and Holland in 1652, and the Connecticut people were anxious to attack New Netherland, which had not ceased its depredations on the outlying settlements. All of the federal commissioners except those from Massachusetts voted to go to war; there was a stormy session of the federal court, in which Massachusetts endeavored in vain to override the other colonies. Connecticut and New Haven applied to Cromwell for assistance. He sent over a fleet to Boston, with injunctions to Massachusetts to cease her opposition. The General Court stoutly refused to raise troops for the enterprise, although it gave to the agents of Cromwell the privilege of enlisting five hundred volunteers in the colony if they could. But while arrangements were in progress for an attack by eight hundred men on New Amsterdam, news came that England and Holland had proclaimed peace (April 5, 1654), and warlike preparations in America ceased.
The weakness of the New England confederation was evident in domestic affairs as well as in foreign wars. Massachusetts was frequently in collision with the commissioners. An instance occurred as early as 1642-1643, when trouble broke out with the Narragansetts, who were friends and allies of the disturber Gorton at Shawomet. Massachusetts refused to sanction hostilities; nevertheless the commissioners despatched a federal force against the Indians; but the expedition proved futile, owing to lack of support from the chief colony.
Saybrook, at the mouth of the Connecticut River, was purchased by the Connecticut federation in 1644. In order to compensate herself, Connecticut levied toll on every vessel passing up the river. Massachusetts owned the valley town of Springfield, and entered complaint before the commissioners (1647) that Connecticut had no right to tax Massachusetts vessels trading with a Massachusetts town. Two years later (1649) the commissioners decided in favor of Connecticut; whereupon Massachusetts levied both export and import duties at Boston designed to hamper the trade of her sister colonies; at the same time she demanded that because of her greater size she be allowed three commissioners, and insisted that the power of the federal body be reduced. This action created great hostility, and threatened at one time to break up the union. By 1654 the contention had been allowed to drop on both sides, and duties on intercolonial trade ceased.
68. Repression of the Quakers (1656-1660).
During the remainder of the Commonwealth period the most serious question which arose in New England was what to do with the Quakers. In the theocracy of the seventeenth century the attitude of the sect was both theologically and politically well calculated to arouse hostility. They would strip all formalities from religion, they would recognize no priestly class, they would not take up arms in the common defence, would pay no tithes and take no oath of allegiance, they doubted the efficacy of baptism, had no veneration for the Sabbath, and had a large respect for the right of individual judgment in spiritual matters. They were aggressive and stubborn, and, goaded on by persecution, broke out into fantastic displays of opposition to the State religion. In England four thousand of them were in jail at one time. When Anne Austin and Mary Fisher arrived in Boston (1656) from England, by way of the Barbados, as a vanguard of the Quaker missionary army, the colonial authorities were aghast with horror. The adventurous women were shipped back to the Barbados, and a law was enacted against "all Quakers, Ranters, and other notorious heretics," providing for their flogging and imprisonment at hard labor. Despite this harsh treatment, the Quakers continued to arrive. Roger Williams said, when applied to by Massachusetts to harry them out of Rhode Island: 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.... They are likely to gain more followers by the conceit of their patient sufferings than by consent to their pernicious sayings." Nevertheless, Rhode Island was and is the stronghold of the Friends in New England.
In 1657 it was enacted that Quakers who had once been sent away and returned, should have their ears lopped off, and for the third offence should have their tongues pierced with red-hot irons. Banishment on pain of death was recommended by the federal commissioners in 1658; and in 1659-1660 four Quakers lost their lives by hanging on Boston Common. Public sentiment revolted at these spectacles, and in 1660 the Massachusetts death-law was repealed, and Quakers were thereafter subjected to nothing worse than being flogged in the several towns; even this gradually ceased, with the growth of a more humane spirit. In Connecticut the sect suffered but little persecution, and in Rhode Island none; while Plymouth and New Haven were nearly as harsh in their treatment as Massachusetts.
The restoration of royalty in England (1660) began a new epoch in the history of the colonies. Their control was placed in the hands of a council for the plantations, and twelve privy councillors were designated to take New England in charge. The Quakers had seized the opportunity of gaining an early hearing from the new king, who was charitably disposed towards them. In its address to Charles, the Massachusetts court expatiated on the factious spirit of the Quakers; but the king replied that while he meant well by the colonies, he desired that hereafter the Quakers be sent to England for trial,—a desire which was as a matter of course disregarded.
69. Royal Commission (1660-1664).
It is not surprising that the king was disposed to look with suspicion upon the men of New England. He had been told 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 king suspects New England's loyalty.| The New Englanders, too, had been somewhat slow to proclaim his ascendancy; while two of the judges who had sentenced his father to death, Goffe and Whalley, were screened from royal justice by the people of New Haven, and afterwards by those of Hadley, a Massachusetts town in the Connecticut valley. Massachusetts had been bold enough when the home government was so distracted by other affairs as to render attention to the colonies impracticable; now that Charles appeared to be turning his attention to America a more politic course was pursued. Simon Bradstreet, a leading layman, and John Norton, prominent among the ministers, were sent to England to make peace with the Crown, and soon returned (1662) with a gracious answer, which, however, was coupled with an order to the court to grant all "freeholders of competent estate" the right of suffrage and office-holding, "without reference to their opinion or profession," to allow the Church of England to hold services, to administer justice in the name of the king, and to compel all inhabitants to swear allegiance to him. The court decreed that legal papers should thereafter run in the king's name; but all other matters in the royal mandate were referred to a committee which failed to report upon them.