Although the church government was democratic in form, and thus of influence in fostering democratic beliefs as to government in general, it must be remembered that at probably no period during the life of the charter, did the number of church members include more than a very distinct minority of the population. Lechford's statement, that three quarters of the people were outside the pale of the church in 1640, seems borne out by other testimony, and this proportion appears not to have been greatly changed till near the end of the century.[[302]] The influence of this democratic form of church organization, however, was clearly foreseen by King James in his dictum, “No bishop, no king”; and of even greater effect in its logical political consequence was the employment of the covenant. In defending its use in the church, Cotton, in the volume already quoted, was forced onto broader ground. “It is evident,” he wrote, “by the light of nature, that all civill Relations are founded in Covenant. For, to passe by naturall Relations between Parents and Children, and violent Relations between Conquerors and Captives; there is no other way given wherby a people (sui Juris) free from naturall and compulsory engagements, can be united or combined together into one visible body.”[[303]]
It is difficult to overestimate the influence which, in time, these two ideas, of a democratic church polity and a voluntary covenant as the only basis for a civil government, would come to exert upon those holding them; but for the moment, the result was the forcible expulsion from the community of two members who did not hold them. John and Samuel Browne, both men of good estate, the one a merchant and the other a lawyer, and both original patentees of the Company, had left England for Salem in the spring of 1629, with high recommendation to Endicott from the Company at home, as men much trusted and respected.[[304]] When the Salem church was organized, the two brothers, who were both on the council, objected, accusing the ministers of having become Separatists, which they denied. As the Brownes refused to give up the use of the prayer-book, and held private services with their followers, Endicott, either from personal feeling or from a real fear that the trouble would disrupt the colony, took a strong stand, and shipped them back to England.[[305]] There is no contemporary account of the details, and it is therefore as unwise, perhaps, to condemn Endicott, as it is unjustifiable to speak of the Brownes as “anarchical,” or, with an odd lack of humor, as “Schismatical.”[[306]] Endicott was mildly censured by the Company in England, who wrote that they conceived that “it is possible some undigested councells have too sudainely bin put in execution, wch may have ill construccion with the state heere;” while the ministers were asked to clear themselves if innocent, or else to look back upon their “miscarriage wth repentance.” In time the Brownes seem to have been settled with satisfactorily on a cash basis.[[307]]
While progress was thus being made in the establishment of the Massachusetts Bay colony, another project for a Puritan settlement was rapidly taking form. After the dissolution of the Virginia Company, the quarrel between the Sandys and Warwick factions was continued in the courts of the Somers Islands, or Bermuda Company, and its affairs were going from bad to worse, largely owing to the frequent changes in the person of the governor as the two factions succeeded each other in power at home. In April, 1629, Sir Nathaniel Rich received a long letter from Governor Bell, in regard to various matters, in the course of which he described two islands lying in the Caribbean, in either of which he thought one year would “be more profitable than seven years here,” and placed the disposition of both islands in Warwick's hands.[[308]]
It was a momentous time. Hardly more than a few days before, Parliament had been angrily dissolved by the King, not to meet again for eleven years. Eliot, Selden, and seven other of the popular leaders had been committed to the Tower. In every direction, Puritans of distinction, and even such lesser men as John Humphrey and John Winthrop, were made to feel the hostility of the court. The recent successful colonization of St. Kitts and Barbadoes by the Earls of Carlisle and Marlborough, both members of the court party, and hostile to the Warwicks and Riches, combined with the flattering report of the new-found islands by Bell, induced Warwick, whose affairs had not been going well, to make an immediate counter-move. With Rich, Gawsell, and others, he provided £2000, and dispatched two ships for the Caribbean under letters of marque. They arrived at Providence about Christmas, the company beginning to make ready for the larger body which was to arrive in the spring, precisely as Endicott had done at Salem. “The aim and desire above all things,” wrote the promoters of the enterprise, “is to plant the true and sincere Religion and worship of God, which in the Christian world is now very much opposed.” At first, the utmost secrecy was maintained as to the real aims of Warwick and his associates; and it was only in December of the following year, after the main body of the colonists had already been planted, that letters-patent for the islands were procured from the King.[[309]]
There can be no doubt, however, that the matter was well known to Winthrop and others of those who were contemplating emigration in the summer of 1629. Not only was Gawsell a neighbor and friend of Winthrop, but all steps taken by the Massachusetts group seem to have been talked over with Warwick and Rich.[[310]] John Winthrop, now in his forty-third year, who was living the life of a country squire at Groton, in Suffolk, and was a small office-holder under government, had been anxiously watching the course of affairs. Of a sensitive and deeply religious nature, strongly attached to the Puritan cause, he could not but regard the future with the greatest anxiety. “The Lord hath admonished, threatened, corrected and astonished us,” he wrote to his wife in May, 1629, “yet we growe worse and worse, so as his spirit will not allwayes strive with us, he must needs give waye to his fury at last.... We sawe this, and humbled not ourselves, to turne from our evill wayes, but have provoked him more than all the nations rounde about us: therefore he is turninge the cuppe toward us also, and because we are the last, our portion must be, to drinke the verye dreggs which remaine. My dear wife, I am veryly persuaded, God will bringe some heavye Affliction upon this lande, and that speedylye.”[[311]] In addition to his fear that all hope of civil, as well as of even a moderate degree of religious, liberty was rapidly fading, Winthrop was also much troubled by the prospects for his personal social and financial position. A few months earlier, he had written to his son Henry, at that time a settler in Barbadoes, that he then owed more than he was able to pay without selling his land; and throughout all his letters and papers of the period runs the same strain of anxiety over money matters.[[312]] Although possessed of a modest estate, which, when subsequently sold, realized £4200,[[313]] the demands of a large family, and the increased cost of living, were more than he could meet. In June, he was, in addition, deprived of his office under the Master of the Wards, and wrote to his wife that “where we shall spende the rest of or short tyme I knowe not: the Lorde, I trust, will direct us in mercye.”[[314]]
With the discussion then going on in Puritan circles as to Endicott's settlement at Salem, and with his neighbors actively interested in the colony at Providence, it was natural that Winthrop should seriously consider the thought of emigrating. Just at this time, a paper consisting of arguments for and against settling a plantation in New England was being circulated among the group of Puritans mentioned earlier in this chapter. The reasons given in favor of it were mainly religious and economic. The first dwelt upon the glory of opposing Anti-Christ, in the form of the French Jesuits in Canada, and of raising “a particular church” in New England, while the second referred to the supposed surplus population at home, and to the standard and cost of living which had “growne to that height of intemperance in all excesse of Riott, as noe mans estate allmost will suffice to keepe saile with his aequalls.”[[315]]
The document, which has come down to us in at least four different forms, was possibly drafted by Winthrop himself, though the evidence is only inferential, and it has also been attributed to the Reverend John White and others.[[316]] It is interesting to note that John Hampden wrote to Sir John Eliot, then in prison, for a copy of it.[[317]] Whether or not Winthrop was the author, several copies, one of them indorsed “May, 1629,” contain memoranda of “Particular considerations in the case of J. W.,” in which he wrote that the success of the plan had come to depend upon him, for “the chiefe supporters (uppon whom the rest depends) will not stirr wthout him,” and that his wife and children are in favor of it. “His meanes,” moreover, he wrote, “heer are so shortened (now 3 of his sonnes being com to age have drawen awaie the one half of his estate) as he shall not be able to continue in that place and imployment where he now iss, his ordinary charg being still as great almost as when his meanes was double”; and that “if he lett pass this opportunitie, That talent wch God hath bestowed uppon him for publicke service is like to be buried.”[[318]] “With what comfort can I live,” he added in one version, “wth 7 or 8 servts in that place and condition where for many years I have spent 3: or 400 li yearly and maintained a greater chardge?”[[319]] The prospects in England, for his wife and children, lay heavily on his mind. “For my care of thee and thine,” he wrote to the former, after the die was cast, “I will say nothing. The Lord knows my heart, that it was one great motive to draw me into this course.”[[320]]
His judgment regarding the ending of the opportunity for a public career for such as himself in England was obviously wrong, as events developed there. The England which retained a Pym, a Hampden, an Eliot, and a Cromwell, may well have offered scope for the talents of a Winthrop. As our eyes are usually fastened on this side of the water, we are apt to think of the Pilgrims, Puritans, and other immigrants as starting their careers by coming here. We rarely consider them in the light of leaving behind them other possible careers in England. It is no disparagement of the courage with which they faced the wilderness, to think of them, for a moment, as Englishmen, abandoning their place in the struggle at home, and to consider the type of mind which thus preferred to exchange the simplifications of unpeopled America for the complexities of the situation in England. Is it, perhaps, altogether fanciful, to attribute, in slight part, that deeply ingrained feeling of Americans, that they wish to have nothing to do with the problems of the world at large, to this choice of the founders in abandoning their place in the struggles of Europe for a more untrammeled career on a small provincial stage?
Winthrop's reasons have been thus dwelt upon, because, in the motives given by him who was the purest, gentlest, and broadest-minded of all who were to guide the destinies of the Bay Colony, we presumably find the highest of those which animated any of the men who sought its shores. As we descend the scale of character, the religious incentives narrow and disappear, as does also the desire for honorable public service, and the economic factor alone remains.
In July, a few weeks after Winthrop lost his office, Isaac Johnson, a brother-in-law of the Earl of Lincoln, wrote to Emanuel Downing, a brother-in-law of Winthrop, asking them to meet at Sempringham, the Earl's seat in Lincolnshire, whither they both went on the 28th.[[321]] There they undoubtedly met Dudley, Johnson, Humphrey, and others of that family and social group. All those gathered there, so far as we know, were keenly interested in the project for Massachusetts. As they were also in close touch with Warwick, Rich, and others of those who were just at the moment planning to send out the colony to Providence in September, it is probable that both places were considered, and Warwick continued for years to urge Winthrop and his group to move to the southern colony. The decision, however, was in favor of Massachusetts; and, a few weeks later, on August 26, Saltonstall, Dudley, Johnson, Humphrey, Winthrop, and seven others, signed an agreement by which they bound themselves to be ready, with their families and goods, by the first of the following March, to embark for New England, and to settle there permanently.[[322]]