Essays in American history

by Henry Ferguson

It was a faith for martyrs and enthusiasts, a faith which in its simple earnestness had wonderful power of conviction, but which was especially liable to counterfeits and pretenders, who could delude themselves or others into a belief in their inspiration, and who substituted a wild extravagance for the enthusiasm of the first believers. One cannot help regretting that Fox’s fate placed him in so uncongenial a century as the seventeenth and in so matter-of-fact a country as England. Had he been born in Italy in the middle ages, his name might rank with that of Francis of Assisi. But it was impossible to expect comprehensiveness or liberality from the Puritans of the day, all the less because of the abuses and fanatical actions by which Quakerism was parodied and made ridiculous. It was essentially an esoteric religion, and had, in consequence, the great disadvantage of being able to furnish no tests by which the true could be distinguished from the false, those inspired with a genuine religious enthusiasm from the fanatics and pretenders.

Their revolt from all established customs and usages, their disrespect for authority, and the boldness with which they rebuked and disputed with the preacher in the pulpit of the “steeple house” or with the justice on the bench, brought them at once into difficulties with the rulers in church and state, who showed themselves no more tolerant of dissent from their own favorite way of thinking and acting than were the most despotic of all the Anglican prelates. They were imprisoned, fined, beaten, and exiled; in 1656 Fox computed that there were seldom less than a thousand Quakers in prison at once. They seemed inspired with a spirit of opposition; wherever they were not wanted, there were they sure to go. They visited Scotland and Ireland, the West India islands and the American colonies; one woman testified before the Grand Turk at Adrianople, two others were imprisoned by the Inquisition at Malta; one brother visited Jerusalem and bore his testimony against the superstition of the monks, others made their way to Rome, Austria, and Hungary, and a number of them preached their doctrines in Holland and Germany.[3] Such enthusiasm, even in those in whom it was genuine, was very nearly akin to insanity; and in many instances the dividing line was crossed, and the votaries allowed themselves to commit grotesque and indecent actions, or to speak most shocking blasphemies and to receive an idolatrous veneration from the silly women who listened to their ravings. The disturbances of the times produced many other bands of fanatics who were frequently confounded with the Quakers, and gave to them the odium of their misdeeds. The Ranters, the Adamites, the Muggletonians, and the Fifth Monarchy Men were all akin to the Quakers in being opposed to the order established by law, and in professing to be guided by an inner light; they differed from them, however, in making their religious fanaticism very often a cloak for secret vice or for wild plots against the government. The temporary overthrow of the comprehensive church establishment of the judicious statesmen and reformers of Elizabeth’s reign had opened the gates to a flood of irreligion and fanaticism. The ecclesiastical despotism established by the Westminster Assembly was more repugnant to Englishmen than the old church which had been suppressed, and the condition of England in religious matters during the Commonwealth forms one of the best apologies for the severe reactionary measures that were adopted when the king and the bishops were restored in 1660.

It was in the middle of this period that the episode of the Quaker troubles in New England occurred, an episode which has been given an unpleasant prominence in the colonial history of New England, partly from the bitterness of the feelings which were aroused on both sides, but especially from the bearing that it had upon the question of the people of Massachusetts for the powers and responsibilities of self-government. The story is a sad one of misdirected earnestness and zeal on the one side, of mistaken consistency and fidelity to principle, however false, upon the other. We condemn while we admire; we wonder at the steadiness and constancy of both judged and judges, while we regret the tragic results that stained the new commonwealth with innocent blood. It is not surprising, however, that such a conflict took place, for as a recent writer of great learning and ability has well said of the relations of the Quakers and their opponents,—“the issue presented seemed to have a resemblance to the mechanical problem of what will be the effect if an irresistible body strikes an immovable body.”[4]

The colonial governments which had been established in New England in the first half of the seventeenth century were not, as is frequently assumed, homogeneous and similar, but differed from each other in their political status and to some extent in their political institutions, and very greatly in the spirit which governed and directed them.

Massachusetts had a charter obtained from the Crown for a trading company, and transferred to the colony by a daring usurpation; Rhode Island had a charter granted by the Long Parliament; Plymouth had obtained its territory by purchase from the old Plymouth Company, but its political existence was winked at rather than recognized; Connecticut and New Haven were, to all intents and purposes, independent republics, save for a somewhat doubtful acknowledgment of the supremacy of the king and of the Commonwealth that was his successor. All but Rhode Island were joined together in a federal league for mutual defence against external and internal enemies.

The circumstances of the settlement of the various colonies had been such as to render the colonists extremely tenacious of their own privileges, and extremely jealous of any interference from the other side of the ocean. The people of Massachusetts, especially, lived in constant dread of their much-prized charter being taken away from them by the king, from whom it had been obtained, or by the parliament, which considered that it was its province to meddle with and to regulate all things in heaven and on earth.

It is quite remarkable that the attitude of the colonies to the home government, during the period of the Commonwealth, no less than in the years which preceded it, was one of jealous suspicion. The charter colonies feared that their privileges would be interfered with, the self-organized colonies were in dread of a quo warranto or a scire facias, which would disclose the irregularity of their organizations or the defectiveness of their titles.

The godly and judicious Winthrop, the statesmanlike founder and governor of Massachusetts, had died, sorrowing on his death-bed for the harshness in religious matters into which he had been forced; and in his place was the severe and fanatical Endicott, a man of gloomy intensity of nature, a stern logician, a man who neither asked nor granted mercy. The clergy were fanatically devoted to their religious and political peculiarities, and were inferior in wisdom and judgment to the great leader who had come out from England with the early settlers at the beginning of the colony. Cotton was dead, and was succeeded in his office of teacher by John Norton, who differed from his predecessor by the lack of the principal characteristics which had so greatly distinguished him: “Profound judgment, eminent gravity, Christian candor, and sweet temper of spirit, whereby he could very placidly bear those who differed from him in other apprehensions.”[5] Hooker had long since removed to Connecticut, where he had been largely instrumental in founding a more genial commonwealth upon a broader and more liberal basis. Wilson, the first pastor of the church at Boston, was indeed still living, but was a worthy associate of Endicott and Norton, and distinguished then, as he had always been, rather by zeal than by either discretion or Christian charity.

By a process of successful exclusions and banishments the community had been rendered tolerably homogeneous, or at least submissive to the theocratical system which had been established. Those who had been defeated in the struggle for existence had gone elsewhere to found new commonwealths, all with a greater amount of religious liberty than that of Massachusetts.

The first we hear of the Quakers in New England is in an order of the General Court appointing May 14, 1656, as a public day of humiliation, “to seek the face of God in behalf of our native country, in reference to the abounding of errors, especially those of the Ranters and Quakers.”[6]