[144]. Hazard, Hist. Coll., vol. I, pp. 58-81.
[145]. Osgood, American Colonies, vol. I, pp. 56 ff.
[146]. Gorges, “Briefe Narration,” p. 64.
[147]. Ibid., pp. 64 ff.; Documents relating to the Colonial History of State of New York (Albany, 1853), vol. III, p. 4; Thomas Pownall, The Administration of the British Colonies (London, 1777), vol. I, p. 49.
[148]. Charter in Hazard, Hist. Coll., vol. I, pp. 103 ff.
[149]. Cf. Osgood, American Colonies, vol. I, pp. 98 ff.
CHAPTER IV
SOME ASPECTS OF PURITANISM
The history of the New England group of colonies was, in the main, shaped throughout the entire prerevolutionary period by the influence of three factors. These were the geographical environment, the Puritan movement in England, and the Mercantile Theory. The first of these has already been discussed, and the last will be more particularly referred to later. As the second was not only a continuing influence during the period, but was the chief determinant in the small settlement of Plymouth, and an element in the great migration to Massachusetts, it must be considered before entering upon the story of those two colonies.
The first difficulty in dealing with the problem of Puritanism is to define the term itself. The earliest appearance of the name seems to have been about 1566, and in the following year a certain London congregation was spoken of as “Puritans or Unspottyd Lambs of the Lord.” The members of this congregation, which met secretly in Plumbers Hall, called their sect “the pure or stainless religion”; and the derivation of the name Puritan, for long a term of reproach, is sufficiently obvious.[[150]] Its application, however, is less so. Part of the confusion is due to the fact that, like “democratic” and many other such words, it has been applied to an attitude toward life, to a broad movement, and to a definite political party. Moreover, between the meeting of those “Unspottyd Lambs” in Plumbers Hall in 1567, and the overthrow of the Puritan Commonwealth of England in 1660, nearly a century elapsed, during which the meaning of the word underwent the changes which time always brings to words of its class, whereas it still continues as a living term in our social and religious vocabulary. Rigidly and briefly to define a word which has thus had a vague and changing content throughout a dozen generations is impossible. To attempt to confine its definition to only one of its former meanings is unhistorical, however desirable it may be that an author should define it as used by himself in his own writings. Not long ago it was fashionable to decry, as showing total lack of scholarship, any attempt to apply the name to the men who founded Plymouth, it being considered as applying solely to those who founded Massachusetts. It may be true that “the Separatists were not Puritans in the original sense of the word”;[[151]] but the word did not retain its original sense, and although Separatist and Nonconformist represent a real difference, the word Puritan may well be used to cover both. The pendulum, indeed, seems now to be swinging the other way, and several writers describe Puritanism broadly as an “attitude of mind,” or as “idealism applied to the solution of contemporary problems.”[[152]] As specific terms for the many sects and minor currents in the great movement, which for a time dominated the history of both the Englands, are by no means lacking, it would seem desirable to retain the use of the word Puritanism in its widest application, and it is so used in the present work.
The idea of unity seems to possess a peculiar fascination for the average human mind. Only a savage or a philosopher may be content with, or rise to, the conception of a pluralistic universe. Moreover, the desire to conform, and to force others to do so, is as typical of the average man as of the average boy.