It was the inestimable fortune of our ancestors to have been taught the difficulties of government in two distinct schools, under the Colonial and Provincial charters, known as the first and second charters. The Charter government as moulded and modelled by our ancestors, was as perfect as is our own constitution of today. It was as tender of common right, as antagonistic to special privilege to classes or interests, and as sensitive, too, to popular impulses, good or evil. And it is thus in all self-governing communities, that their weal or woe, being supposedly in their own keeping, the freest forms of delegated government written on parchment are in themselves no protection, but will be such instruments of blessing or of destruction as may best gratify the controlling influences or interests for the time being.
In tracing the origin and development of the sentiment and the desires, the fears and the prejudices which culminated in the American Revolution, in the separation of thirteen colonies from Great Britain, it is necessary to notice the early settlement and progress of those New England colonies in which the seeds of that Revolution were first sown and nurtured to maturity. The Colonies of New England were the result of two distinct emigrations of English Puritans, two classes of Puritans, two distinct governments for more than sixty years—one class of these emigrants, now known as the "Pilgrim Fathers," having first fled from England to Holland, thence emigrated to New England in 1620 in "the Mayflower," and named their place of settlement "New Plymouth." Here they elected seven governors in succession, and existed under a self-constituted government for seventy years. The second class was called "Puritan Fathers." The first installment of their immigrants arrived in 1629, under Endicott, the ancestor of Mr. Joseph Chamberlain's wife. They were known as the "Massachusetts Bay Company," and their final capital was Boston, which afterwards became the capital of the Province and of the State.
The characteristics of the separate and independent governments of these two classes of Puritans were widely different. The one was tolerant, non-persecuting, and loyal to the King, during the whole period of its seventy years' existence; the other was an intolerant persecutor of all religionists who did not adopt its worship, and disloyal, from the beginning, to the government from which it held its Charter, and sedulously sowed and cultivated the seeds of disaffection and hostility to the Royal government until they grew and ripened into the harvest of the American Revolution.
English Puritanism, transferred from England to the head of Massachusetts Bay in 1629, presents the same characteristics which it developed in England. In Massachusetts it had no competitor, it developed its principles and spirit without restraint; it was absolute in power from 1629 to 1689. During these sixty years it assumed independence of the government to which it owed its corporate existence; it made it a penal crime for any immigrant to appeal to England against a local decision of courts or of government; it permitted no oath of allegiance to the King, nor the administration of the laws in his name; it allowed no elective franchise to any Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Baptist, Quaker or Papist. Every non-member of the Congregational church was compelled to pay taxes and bear all other Puritan burdens, but was allowed no representation by franchise, nor had he eligibility for any public office.
When the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Company emigrated from England, they professed to be members of the Church of England, but Endicott, who had imbibed views of church government and of forms of worship, determined not to perpetuate here the worship of the Established Church, to which he had professed to belong when he left England, but to establish a new church with a new form of worship. He seemed to have brought over some thirty of the immigrants to his new scheme, but a majority either stood aloof from, or were opposed to his extraordinary proceeding. Among the most noted adherents of the old Church of the Reformation were two brothers, John and Samuel Brown, who refused to be parties to this new and locally devised church revolution, and resolved for themselves, their families, and such as thought with them, to continue to worship God according to the custom of their fathers.
It is the fashion of many American historians, as well as their echoes in England, to apply epithets of contumely or scorn to these men. Both the Browns were men of wealth, one a lawyer, the other a private gentleman, and both of them were of a social position in England much superior to that of Endicott. They were among the original patentees and first founders of the colony; they were church reformers, but neither of them a church revolutionist. The brothers were brought before the Governor, who informed them that New England was no place for such as they, and therefore he sent them both back to England, on the return of the ships the same year.
Endicott resolved to admit of no opposition. They who could not be terrified into silence were not commanded to withdraw, but were seized and banished as criminals.[3]
A year later John Winthrop was appointed to supersede Endicott as Governor. On his departure with a fleet of eleven ships from England an address to their "Fathers and Brethren of the Church of England" was published by Winthrop from his ship, the Arbella, disclaiming the acts of some among them hostile to the Church of England, declaring their obligations and attachment to it. He said: "We desire you would be pleased to take notice of the principles and body of our Company as those who esteem it an honor to call the Church of England, from whence we rise, our dear Mother, and cannot part from our native countrie, where she especially resideth, without much sadness of heart and many tears in our eyes." It might be confidently expected that Mr. Winthrop, after this address of loyalty and affection to his Father and Brethren of the Church of England, would, on his arrival at Massachusetts Bay, and assuming its government, have rectified the wrongs of Endicott and his party, and have secured at least freedom of worship to the children of his "dear Mother." But he did nothing of the kind; he seems to have fallen in with the very proceedings of Endicott which had been disclaimed by him in his address.
Thus was the first seed sown, which germinated for one hundred and thirty years, and then ripened in the American Revolution. It was the opening wedge which shivered the transatlantic branches from the parent stock. It was the consciousness of having abused the Royal confidence, and broken faith with their Sovereign, of having acted contrary to the laws and statutes of England, that led the Government of Massachusetts Bay to resist and evade all inquiries into their proceedings; to prevent all evidence from being transmitted to England, and to punish as criminals all who should appeal to England against any of their proceedings; to claim, in short, independence and immunity from all responsibility to the Crown for anything they did or might do. This spirit of tyranny and intolerance, of proscription and persecution, caused all the disputes with the parent Government, and all the bloodshed on account of religion in Massachusetts, which its Government inflicted in subsequent years, in contradistinction to the Governments of Plymouth, Rhode Island, Connecticut and even Maryland.
The church government established by the Puritans at Boston was not a government of free citizens elected by a free citizen suffrage, or even of property qualification, but was the "reign of the church, the members of which constituted but about one-sixth of the population, five-sixths being mere helots bound to do the work and pay the taxes imposed upon them by the reigning church but denied all eligibility to any office in the Commonwealth." It was indeed such a "connection between church and state" as had never existed in any Protestant country; it continued for sixty years, until suppressed by a second Royal Charter, as will appear in the next chapter.