This liberal grant was made at a time when people still supposed the Pacific coast to be not far west of Henry Hudson's river. The territory was granted to an association of six gentlemen, only one of whom—John Endicott—figures conspicuously in the history of New England. The grant was made in the usual reckless style, and conflicted with various patents which had been issued before. In 1622 Gorges and John Mason had obtained a grant of all the land between the rivers Kennebec and Merrimack, and the new grant encroached somewhat upon this. The difficulty seems to have been temporarily adjusted by some sort of compromise which restricted the new grant to the Merrimack, for in 1629 we find Mason's title confirmed to the region between that river and the Piscataqua, while later on Gorges appears as proprietor of the territory between the Piscataqua and the Kennebec. A more serious difficulty was the claim of Robert Gorges, son of Sir Ferdinando. That young man had in 1623 obtained a grant of some 300 square miles in Massachusetts, and had gone to look after it, but had soon returned discouraged to England and shortly afterward died. But his claim devolved upon his surviving brother, John Gorges, and Sir Ferdinando, in consenting to the grant to Endicott and his friends, expressly reserved the rights of his sons. No such reservation, however, was mentioned in the Massachusetts charter, and the colonists never paid the slightest heed to it. In these conflicting claims were sown seeds of trouble which bore fruit for more than half a century. In such cases actual possession is apt to make nine points in the law, and accordingly Endicott was sent over, as soon as possible, with sixty persons, to reinforce the party at Naumkeag and supersede Conant as its leader. On Endicott's arrival in September, 1628, the settlers were at first inclined to dispute his authority, but they were soon conciliated, and in token of this amicable adjustment the place was called by the Hebrew name of Salem, or "peace." [Sidenote: Conflicting grants sow seeds of trouble] [Sidenote: John Endicot and the founding of Salem]
Meanwhile Mr. White and the partners in England were pushing things vigorously. Their scheme took a wider scope. They were determined to establish something more than a trading company. From Charles I. it was sometimes easy to get promises because he felt himself under no obligation to keep them. In March, 1629, a royal charter was granted, creating a corporation, under the legal style of the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay in New England. The affairs of this corporate body were to be managed by a governor, deputy-governor, and a council of eighteen assistants, to be elected annually by the company. They were empowered to make such laws as they liked for their settlers, provided they did not contravene the laws of England,—a proviso susceptible of much latitude of interpretation. The place where the company was to hold its meetings was not mentioned in the charter. The law-officers of the crown at first tried to insert a condition that the government must reside in England, but the grantees with skilful argument succeeding in preventing this. Nothing was said in the charter about religious liberty, for a twofold reason: the crown would not have granted it, and it was not what the grantees wanted; such a provision would have been liable to hamper them seriously in carrying out their scheme. They preferred to keep in their own hands the question as to how much or how little religious liberty they should claim or allow. Six small ships were presently fitted out, and upon them were embarked 300 men, 80 women, and 26 children, with 140 head of cattle, 40 goats, and abundance of arms, ammunition, and tools. The principal leader of this company was Francis Higginson, of St. John's College, Cambridge, rector of a church in Leicestershire, who had been deprived of his living for non-conformity. With him were associated two other ministers, also graduates of Cambridge. All three were members of the council. By the arrival of this company at Salem, Endicott now became governor of a colony larger than any yet started in New England,—larger than Plymouth after its growth of nearly nine years. [Sidenote: The Company of Massachusetts Bay]
The time was at length ripe for that great Puritan exodus of which the voyage of the Mayflower had been the premonitory symptom. The grand crisis for the Puritans had come, the moment when decisive action could no longer be deferred. It was not by accident that the rapid development of John White's enterprise into the Company of Massachusetts Bay coincided exactly with the first four years of the reign of Charles I. They were years well fitted to bring such a scheme to quick maturity. The character of Charles was such as to exacerbate the evils of his father's reign. James could leave some things alone in the comfortable hope that all would by and by come out right, but Charles was not satisfied without meddling everywhere. Both father and son cherished some good intentions; both were sincere believers in their narrow theory of kingcraft. For wrong-headed obstinacy, utter want of tact, and bottomless perfidy, there was little to choose between them. The humorous epitaph of the grandson "whose word no man relies on" might have served for them all. But of this unhappy family Charles I. was eminently the dreamer. He lived in a world of his own, and was slow in rendering thought into action; and this made him rely upon the quick-witted but unwise and unscrupulous Buckingham, [5] who was silly enough to make feeble attempts at unpopular warfare without consulting Parliament. During each of Charles's first four years there was an angry session of Parliament, in which, through the unwillingness of the popular leaders to resort to violence, the king's policy seemed able to hold its ground. Despite all protest the king persisted in levying strange taxes and was to some extent able to collect them. Men who refused to pay enforced loans were thrown into jail and the writ of habeas corpus was denied them. Meanwhile the treatment of Puritans became more and more vexatious. It was clear enough that Charles meant to become an absolute monarch, like Louis XIII., but Parliament began by throwing all the blame upon the unpopular minister and seeking to impeach him.
On the 5th of June, 1628, the House of Commons presented the most extraordinary spectacle, perhaps in all its history. The famous Petition of Right had been Passed by both Houses, and the royal answer had just been received. Its tone was that of gracious assent, but it omitted the necessary legal formalities, and the Commons well knew what this meant. They were to be tricked with sweet words, and the petition was not to acquire the force of a statute. How was it possible to deal with such a slippery creature? There was but one way of saving the dignity of the throne without sacrificing the liberty of the people, and that was to hold the king's ministers responsible to Parliament, in anticipation of modern methods. It was accordingly proposed to impeach the Duke of Buckingham before the House of Lords. The Speaker now "brought an imperious message from the king, ... warning them ... that he would not tolerate any aspersion upon his ministers." Nothing daunted by this, Sir John Eliot arose to lead the debate, when the Speaker called him to order in view of the king's message. "Amid a deadly stillness" Eliot sat down and burst into tears. For a moment the House was overcome with despair. Deprived of all constitutional methods of redress, they suddenly saw yawning before them the direful alternative—slavery or civil war. Since the day of Bosworth a hundred and fifty years had passed without fighting worthy of mention on English soil, such an era of peace as had hardly ever before been seen on the earth; now half the nation was to be pitted against the other half, families were to be divided against themselves, as in the dreadful days of the Roses, and with what consequences no one could foresee. "Let us sit in silence," quoth Sir Dudley Digges, "we are miserable, we know not what to do!" Nay, cried Sir Nathaniel Rich, "we must now speak, or forever hold our peace." Then did grim Mr. Prynne and Sir Edward Coke mingle their words with sobs, while there were few dry eyes in the House. Presently they found their voices, and used them in a way that wrung from the startled king his formal assent to the Petition of Right. [Sidenote: Remarkable scene in the House of Commons]
There is something strangely pathetic and historically significant [6] in the emotion of these stern, fearless men. The scene was no less striking on the 2d of the following March, when, "amid the cries and entreaties of the Speaker held down in his chair by force," while the Usher of the Black Rod was knocking loudly at the bolted door, and the tramp of the king's soldiers was heard in the courtyard, Eliot's clear voice rang out the defiance that whoever advised the levy of tonnage and poundage without a grant from Parliament, or whoever voluntarily paid those duties, was to be counted an enemy to the kingdom and a betrayer of its liberties. As shouts of "Aye, aye," resounded on every side, "the doors were flung open, and the members poured forth in a throng." The noble Eliot went to end his days in the Tower, and for eleven years no Parliament sat again in England. [7]
It was in one and the same week that Charles I. thus began his experiment of governing without a Parliament, and that he granted a charter to the Company of Massachusetts Bay. He was very far, as we shall see, from realizing the import of what he was doing. To the Puritan leaders it was evident that a great struggle was at hand. Affairs at home might well seem desperate, and the news from abroad was not encouraging. It was only four months since the surrender of Rochelle had ended the existence of the Huguenots as an armed political party. They had now sunk into the melancholy condition of a tolerated sect which may at any moment cease to be tolerated. In Germany the terrible Thirty Years War had just reached the darkest moment for the Protestants. Fifteen months were yet to pass before the immortal Gustavus was to cross the Baltic and give to the sorely harassed cause of liberty a fresh lease of life. The news of the cruel Edict of Restitution in this same fateful month of March, 1629, could not but give the English Puritans great concern. Everywhere in Europe the champions of human freedom seemed worsted. They might well think that never had the prospect looked so dismal; and never before, as never since, did the venture of a wholesale migration to the New World so strongly recommend itself as the only feasible escape from a situation that was fast becoming intolerable. Such were the anxious thoughts of the leading Puritans in the spring of 1629, and in face of so grave a problem different minds came naturally to different conclusions. Some were for staying in England to fight it out to the bitter end; some were for crossing the ocean to create a new England in the wilderness. Either task was arduous enough, and not to be achieved without steadfast and sober heroism. [Sidenote: Desperate nature of the crisis]
On the 26th of August twelve gentlemen, among the most eminent in the Puritan party, held a meeting at Cambridge, and resolved to lead a migration to New England, provided the charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company and the government established under it could be transferred to that country. On examination it appeared that no legal obstacle stood in the way. Accordingly such of the old officers as did not wish to take part in the emigration resigned their places, which were forthwith filled by these new leaders. For governor the choice fell upon John Winthrop, a wealthy gentleman from Groton in Suffolk, who was henceforth to occupy the foremost place among the founders of New England. Winthrop was at this time forty-one years of age, having been born in the memorable year of the Armada. He was a man of remarkable strength and beauty of character, grave and modest, intelligent and scholarlike, intensely religious and endowed with a moral sensitiveness that was almost morbid, yet liberal withal in his opinions and charitable in disposition. When his life shall have been adequately written, as it never has been, he will be recognized as one of the very noblest figures in American history. From early youth he had that same power of winning confidence and commanding respect for which Washington was so remarkable; and when he was selected as the Moses of the great Puritan exodus, there was a wide-spread feeling that extraordinary results were likely to come of such an enterprise.
In marked contrast to Winthrop stands the figure of the man associated with him as deputy-governor. Thomas Dudley came of an ancient family, the history of which, alike in the old and in the new England, has not been altogether creditable. He represented the elder branch of that Norman family, to the younger branch of which belonged the unfortunate husband of Lady Jane Grey and the unscrupulous husband of Amy Robsart. There was, however, very little likeness to Elizabeth's gay lover in grim Thomas Dudley. His Puritanism was bleak and stern, and for Christian charity he was not eminent. He had a foible for making verses, and at his death there was found in his pocket a poem of his, containing a quatrain wherein the intolerance of that age is neatly summed up:—
"Let men of God in courts and churches watch O'er such as do a Toleration hatch, Lest that ill egg bring forth a cockatrice To poison all with heresy and vice."
Such was the spirit of most of the Puritans of that day, but in the manifestation of it there were great differences, and here was the strong contrast between Dudley and Winthrop,—a contrast which shows itself in their portraits. In that of Dudley we see the typical narrow-minded, strait-laced Calvinist for whom it is so much easier to entertain respect than affection. In that of Winthrop we see a face expressive of what was finest in the age of Elizabeth,—the face of a spiritual brother of Raleigh and Bacon.