The accession of two men so important as Winthrop and Dudley served to bring matters speedily to a crisis. Their embarkation in April, 1630, was the signal for a general movement on the part of the English Puritans. Before Christmas of that year seventeen ships had come to New England, bringing more than 1000 passengers. This huge wave of immigration quite overwhelmed and bore away the few links of possession by which Gorges had thus far kept his hold upon the country. In January, 1629, John Gorges had tried to assert the validity of his late brother's claim by executing conveyances covering portions of it. One of these was to John Oldham, a man who had been harshly treated at Plymouth, and might be supposed very ready to defend his rights against settlers of the Puritan company. Gorges further maintained that he retained possession of the country through the presence of his brother's tenants, Blackstone, Maverick, Walford, and others on the shores of the bay. In June, 1629, Endicott had responded by sending forward some fifty persons from Salem to begin the settlement of Charlestown. Shortly before Winthrop's departure from England, Gorges had sent that singular personage Sir Christopher Gardiner to look after his interests in the New World, and there he was presently found established near the mouth of the Neponset river, in company with "a comly yonge woman whom he caled his cousin." But these few claimants were now at once lost in the human tide which poured over Charlestown, Boston, Newtown, Watertown, Roxbury, and Dorchester. The settlement at Merrymount was again dispersed, and Morton sent back to London; Gardiner fled to the coast of Maine and thence sailed for England in 1632. The Puritans had indeed occupied the country in force.
Here on the very threshold we are confronted by facts which show that not a mere colonial plantation, but a definite and organized state was in process of formation. The emigration was not like that of Jamestown or of Plymouth. It sufficed at once to make the beginnings of half a dozen towns, and the question as to self-government immediately sprang up. Early in 1631 a tax of £60 was assessed upon the settlements, in order to pay for building frontier fortifications at Newtown. This incident was in itself of small dimensions, as incidents in newly founded states are apt to be. But in its historic import it may serve to connect the England of John Hampden with the New England of Samuel Adams. The inhabitants of Watertown at first declined to pay this tax, which was assessed by the Board of Assistants, on the ground that English freemen cannot rightfully be taxed save by their own consent. This protest led to a change in the constitution of the infant colony, and here, at once, we are introduced to the beginnings of American constitutional history. At first it was thought that public business could be transacted by a primary assembly of all the freemen in the colony meeting four times in the year; but the number of freemen increased so fast that this was almost at once (in October, 1630) found to be impracticable. The right of choosing the governor and making the laws was then left to the Board of Assistants; and in May, 1631, it was further decided that the assistants need not be chosen afresh every year, but might keep their seats during good behaviour or until ousted by special vote of the freemen. If the settlers of Massachusetts had been ancient Greeks or Romans, this would have been about as far as they could go in the matter; the choice would have been between a primary assembly and an assembly of notables. It is curious to see Englishmen passing from one of these alternatives to the other. But it was only for a moment. The protest of the Watertown men came in time to check these proceedings, which began to have a decidedly oligarchical look. To settle the immediate question of the tax, two deputies were sent from each settlement to advise with the Board of Assistants; while the power of choosing each year the governor and assistants was resumed by the freemen. Two years later, in order to reserve to the freemen the power of making laws without interfering too much with the ordinary business of life, the colonists fell back upon the old English rural plan of electing deputies or representatives to a general court. [Sidenote: The question as to self-government raised at Watertown]
At first the deputies sat in the same chamber with the assistants, but at length in 1644 they were formed into a second chamber with increased powers, and the way in which this important constitutional change came about is worth remembering, as an illustration of the smallness of the state which so soon was to play a great part in history. As Winthrop puts it, "there fell out a great business upon a very small occasion." To a certain Captain Keayne, of Boston, a rich man deemed to be hard and overbearing toward the poor, there was brought a stray pig, whereof he gave due public notice through the town-crier, yet none came to claim it till after he had killed a pig of his own which he kept in the same stye with the stray. A year having passed by, a poor woman named Sherman came to see the stray and to decide if it were one that she had lost. Not recognizing it as hers, she forthwith laid claim to the slaughtered pig. The case was brought before the elders of the church of Boston, who decided that the woman was mistaken. Mrs. Sherman then accused the captain of theft, and brought the case before a jury, which exonerated the defendant with £3 costs. The captain then sued Mrs. Sherman for defamation of character and got a verdict for £40 damages, a round sum indeed to assess upon the poor woman. But long before this it had appeared that she had many partisans and supporters; it had become a political question, in which the popular protest against aristocracy was implicated. Not yet browbeaten, the warlike Mrs. Sherman appealed to the General Court. The length of the hearing shows the importance which was attached to the case. After seven days of discussion, the vote was taken. Seven assistants and eight deputies approved the former decisions, two assistants and fifteen deputies condemned them, while seven deputies refrained from voting. In other words, Captain Keayne has a decided majority among the more aristocratic assistants, while Mrs. Sherman seemed to prevail with the more democratic deputies. Regarding the result as the vote of a single body, the woman had a plurality of two; regarding it as the vote of a double body, her cause had prevailed in the lower house, but was lost by the veto of the upper. No decision was reached at the time, but after a year of discussion the legislature was permanently separated into two houses, each with a veto power upon the other; and this was felt to be a victory for the assistants. As for the ecclesiastical polity of the new colony, it had begun to take shape immediately upon the arrival of Endicott's party at Salem. The clergymen, Samuel Skelton and Francis Higginson, consecrated each other, and a church covenant and confession of faith were drawn up by Higginson. Thirty persons joining in this covenant constituted the first church in the colony; and several brethren appointed by this church proceeded formally to ordain the two ministers by the laying on of hands. In such simple wise was the first Congregational church in Massachusetts founded. The simple fact of removal from England converted all the Puritan emigrants into Separatists, as Robinson had already predicted. Some, however, were not yet quite prepared for so radical a measure. These proceedings gave umbrage to two of the Salem party, who attempted forthwith to set up a separate church in conformity with episcopal models. A very important question was thus raised at once, but it was not allowed to disturb the peace of the colony. Endicott was a man of summary methods. He immediately sent the two malcontents back to England; and thus the colonial church not only seceded from the national establishment, but the principle was virtually laid down that the Episcopal form of worship would not be tolerated in the colony. For the present such a step was to be regarded as a measure of self-defence on the part of the colonists. Episcopacy to them meant actual and practical tyranny—the very thing they had crossed the ocean expressly to get away from—and it was hardly to be supposed that they would encourage the growth of it in their new home. One or two surpliced priests, conducting worship in accordance with the Book of Common Prayer, might in themselves be excellent members of society; but behind the surpliced priest the colonist saw the intolerance of Laud and the despotism of the Court of High Commission. In 1631 a still more searching measure of self-protection was adopted. It was decided that "no man shall be admitted to the freedom of this body politic, but such as are members of some of the churches within the limits of the same." Into the merits of this measure as illustrating the theocratic ideal of society which the Puritans sought to realize in New England, we shall inquire hereafter. At present we must note that, as a measure of self-protection, this decree was intended to keep out of the new community all emissaries of Strafford and Laud, as well as such persons as Morton and Gardiner and other agents of Sir Ferdinando Gorges.
By the year 1634 the scheme of the Massachusetts Company had so far prospered that nearly 4000 Englishmen had come over, and some twenty villages on or near the shores of the bay had been founded. The building of permanent houses, roads, fences, and bridges had begun to go on quite briskly; farms were beginning to yield a return for the labour of the husbandman; lumber, furs, and salted fish were beginning to be sent to England in exchange for manufactured articles; 4000 goats and 1500 head of cattle grazed in the pastures, and swine innumerable rooted in the clearings and helped to make ready the land for the ploughman. Political meetings were held, justice was administered by magistrates after old English precedents, and church services were performed by a score of clergymen, nearly all graduates of Cambridge, though one or two had their degrees from Oxford, and nearly all of whom had held livings in the Church of England. The most distinguished of these clergymen, John Cotton, in his younger days a Fellow and Tutor of Emmanuel College, had for more than twenty years been rector of St. Botolph's, when he left the most magnificent parish church in England to hold service in the first rude meeting-house of the new Boston. From Emmanuel College came also Thomas Hooker and John Harvard. Besides these clergymen, so many of the leading persons concerned in the emigration were university men that it was not long before a university began to seem indispensable to the colony. In 1636 the General Court appropriated £400 toward the establishment of a college at Newtown. In 1638 John Harvard, dying childless, bequeathed his library and the half of his estate to the new college, which the Court forthwith ordered to be called by his name; while in honour of the mother university the name of the town was changed to Cambridge.
It has been said that the assembly which decreed the establishment of Harvard College was "the first body in which the people, by their representatives, ever gave their own money to found a place of education." [8] The act was a memorable one if we have regard to all the circumstances of the year in which it was done. On every side danger was in the air. Threatened at once with an Indian war, with the enmity of the home government, and with grave dissensions among themselves, the year 1636 was a trying one indeed for the little community of Puritans, and their founding a college by public taxation just at this time is a striking illustration of their unalterable purpose to realize, in this new home, their ideal of an educated Christian society. [Sidenote: Threefold danger in the year 1636]
That the government of Charles I. should view with a hostile eye the growth of a Puritan state in New England is not at all surprising. (1. From the king, who prepares to attack the infant colony but is fueled by dissensions at home.) The only fit ground for wonder would seem to be that Charles should have been willing at the outset to grant a charter to the able and influential Puritans who organized the Company of Massachusetts Bay. Probably, however, the king thought at first that it would relieve him at home if a few dozen of the Puritan leaders could be allowed to concentrate their minds upon a project of colonization in America. It might divert attention for a moment from his own despotic schemes. Very likely the scheme would prove a failure and the Massachusetts colony incur a fate like that of Roanoke Island; and at all events the wealth of the Puritans might better be sunk in a remote and perilous enterprise than employed at home in organizing resistance to the crown. Such, very likely, may have been the king's motive in granting the Massachusetts charter two days after turning his Parliament out of doors. But the events of the last half-dozen years had come to present the case in a new light. The young colony was not languishing. It was full of sturdy life; it had wrought mischief to the schemes of Gorges; and what was more, it had begun to take unheard-of liberties with things ecclesiastical and political. Its example was getting to be a dangerous one. It was evidently worth while to put a strong curb upon Massachusetts. Any promise made to his subjects Charles regarded as a promise made under duress which he was quite justified in breaking whenever it suited his purpose to do so. Enemies of Massachusetts were busy in England. Schismatics from Salem and revellers from Merrymount were ready with their tales of woe, and now Gorges and Mason were vigorously pressing their territorial claims. They bargained with the king. In February, 1635, the moribund Council for New England surrendered its charter and all its corporate rights in America, on condition that the king should disregard all the various grants by which these rights had from time to time been alienated, and should divide up the territory of New England in severalty among the members of the Council. In pursuance of this scheme Gorges and Mason, together with half a dozen noblemen, were allowed to parcel out New England among themselves as they should see fit. In this way the influence of the Marquis of Hamilton, with the Earls of Arundel, Surrey, Carlisle, and Stirling, might be actively enlisted against the Massachusetts Company. A writ of quo warranto was brought against it; and it was proposed to send Sir Ferdinando to govern New England with viceregal powers like those afterward exercised by Andros.
For a moment the danger seemed alarming; but, as Winthrop says, "the Lord frustrated their design." It was noted as a special providence that the ship in which Gorges was to sail was hardly off the stocks when it fell to pieces. Then the most indefatigable enemy of the colony, John Mason, suddenly died. The king issued his famous writ of ship-money and set all England by the ears; and, to crown all, the attempt to read the Episcopal liturgy at St. Giles's church in Edinburgh led straight to the Solemn League and Covenant. Amid the first mutterings of the Great Rebellion the proceedings against Massachusetts were dropped, and the unheeded colony went on thriving in its independent course. Possibly too some locks at Whitehall may have been turned with golden keys, [9] for the company was rich, and the king was ever open to such arguments. But when the news of his evil designs had first reached Boston the people of the infant colony showed no readiness to yield to intimidation. In their measures there was a decided smack of what was to be realized a hundred and forty years later. Orders were immediately issued for fortifying Castle Island in the harbour and the heights at Charlestown and Dorchester. Militia companies were put in training, and a beacon was set up on the highest hill in Boston, to give prompt notice to all the surrounding country of any approaching enemy.
While the ill will of the home government thus kept the colonists in a state of alarm, there were causes of strife at work at their very doors, of which they were fain to rid themselves as soon as possible. Among all the Puritans who came to New England there is no more interesting figure than the learned, quick-witted pugnacious Welshman, Roger Williams. He was over-fond of logical subtleties and delighted in controversy. There was scarcely any subject about which he did not wrangle, from the sinfulness of persecution to the propriety of women wearing veils in church. Yet, with all this love of controversy, there has perhaps never lived a more gentle and kindly soul. Within five years from the settlement of Massachusetts this young preacher had announced the true principles of religious liberty with a clearness of insight quite remarkable in that age. Roger Williams had been aided in securing an education by the great lawyer Sir Edward Coke, and had lately taken his degree at Pembroke College, Cambridge; but the boldness with which he declared his opinions had aroused the hostility of Laud, and in 1631 he had come over to Plymouth, whence he removed two years later to Salem, and became pastor of the church there. The views of Williams, if logically carried out, involved the entire separation of church from state, the equal protection of all forms of religious faith, the repeal of all laws compelling attendance on public worship, the abolition of tithes and of all forced contributions to the support of religion. Such views are to-day quite generally adopted by the more civilized portions of the Protestant world; but it is needless to say that they were not the views of the seventeenth century, in Massachusetts or elsewhere. For declaring such opinions as these on the continent of Europe, anywhere except in Holland, a man like Williams would in that age have run great risk of being burned at the stake. In England, under the energetic misgovernment of Laud, he would very likely have had to stand in the pillory with his ears cropped, or perhaps, like Bunyan and Baxter, would have been sent to jail. In Massachusetts such views were naturally enough regarded as anarchical, but in Williams's case they were further complicated by grave political imprudence. He wrote a pamphlet in which he denied the right of the colonists to the lands which they held in New England under the king's grant. He held that the soil belonged to the Indians, that the settlers could only obtain a valid title to it by purchase from them, and that the acceptance of a patent from a mere intruder, like the king, was a sin requiring public repentance. This doctrine was sure to be regarded in England as an attack upon the king's supremacy over Massachusetts, and at the same time an incident occurred in Salem which made it all the more unfortunate. The royal colours under which the little companies of militia marched were emblazoned with the red cross of St. George. The uncompromising Endicott loathed this emblem as tainted with Popery, and one day he publicly defaced the flag of the Salem company by cutting out the cross. The enemies of Massachusetts misinterpreted this act as a defiance aimed at the royal authority, and they attributed it to the teachings of Williams. In view of the king's unfriendliness these were dangerous proceedings. Endicott was summoned before the General Court at Boston, where he was publicly reprimanded and declared incapable of holding office for a year. A few months afterward, in January, 1636, Williams was ordered by the General Court to come to Boston and embark in a ship that was about to set sail for England. But he escaped into the forest, and made his way through the snow to the wigwam of Massasoit. He was a rare linguist, and had learned to talk fluently in the language of the Indians, and now he passed the winter in trying to instill into their ferocious hearts something of the gentleness of Christianity. In the spring he was privately notified by Winthrop that if he were to steer his course to Narragansett bay he would be secure from molestation; and such was the beginning of the settlement of Providence. [Sidenote: From religious dissensions; Roger Williams]
Shortly before the departure of Williams, there came to Boston one of the greatest Puritan statesmen of that heroic age, the younger Henry Vane. It is pleasant to remember that the man and Anne who did so much to overthrow the tyranny of Strafford, who brought the military strength of Scotland to the aid of the hard-pressed Parliament, who administered the navy with which Blake won his astonishing victories, who dared even withstand Cromwell at the height of his power when his measures became too violent,—it is pleasant to remember that this admirable man was once the chief magistrate of an American commonwealth. It is pleasant for a Harvard man to remember that as such he presided over the assembly that founded our first university. Thorough republican and enthusiastic lover of liberty, he was spiritually akin to Jefferson and to Samuel Adams. Like Williams he was a friend to toleration, and like Williams he found Massachusetts an uncomfortable home. In 1636 he was only twenty-four years of age, "young in years," and perhaps not yet "in sage counsel old." He was chosen governor for that year, and his administration was stormy. Among those persons who had followed Mr. Cotton from Lincolnshire was Mrs. Anne Hutchinson, a very bright and capable lady, if perhaps somewhat impulsive and indiscreet. She had brought over with her, says Winthrop, "two dangerous errors: first, that the person of the Holy Ghost dwells in a justified person; second, that no sanctification can help to evidence to us our justification." Into the merits of such abstruse doctrines it is not necessary for the historian to enter. One can hardly repress a smile as one reflects how early in the history of Boston some of its characteristic social features were developed. It is curious to read of lectures there in 1636, lectures by a lady, and transcendentalist lectures withal! Never did lectures in Boston arouse greater excitement than Mrs. Hutchinson's. Many of her hearers forsook the teachings of the regular ministers, to follow her. [Sidenote: Henry Vane and Anne Hutchinson]
She was very effectively supported by her brother-in-law, Mr. Wheelwright, an eloquent preacher, and for a while she seemed to be carrying everything before her. She won her old minister Mr. Cotton, she won the stout soldier Captain Underhill, she won Governor Vane himself; while she incurred the deadly hatred of such men as Dudley and Cotton's associate John Wilson. The church at Boston was divided into two hostile camps. The sensible Winthrop marvelled at hearing men distinguished "by being under a covenant of grace or a covenant of works, as in other countries between Protestants and Papists," and he ventured to doubt whether any man could really tell what the difference was. The theological strife went on until it threatened to breed civil disaffection among the followers of Mrs. Hutchinson. A peculiar bitterness was given to the affair, from the fact that she professed to be endowed with the spirit of prophecy and taught her partisans that it was their duty to follow the biddings of a supernatural light; and there was nothing which the orthodox Puritan so steadfastly abhorred as the anarchical pretence of living by the aid of a supernatural light. In a strong and complex society the teachings of Mrs. Hutchinson would have awakened but a languid speculative interest, or perhaps would have passed by unheeded. In the simple society of Massachusetts in 1636, physically weak and as yet struggling for very existence, the practical effect of such teachings may well have been deemed politically dangerous. When things came to such a pass that the forces of the colony were mustered for an Indian campaign and the men of Boston were ready to shirk the service because they suspected their chaplain to be "under a covenant of works," it was naturally thought to be high time to put Mrs. Hutchinson down. In the spring of 1637 Winthrop was elected governor, and in August Vane returned to England. His father had at that moment more influence with the king than any other person except Strafford, and the young man had indiscreetly hinted at an appeal to the home government for the protection of the Antinomians, as Mrs. Hutchinson's followers were called. But an appeal from America to England was something which Massachusetts would no more tolerate in the days of Winthrop than in the days of Hancock and Adams. Soon after Vane's departure, Mrs. Hutchinson and her friends were ordered to leave the colony. It was doubtless an odious act of persecution, yet of all such acts which stain the history of Massachusetts in the seventeenth century, it is just the one for which the plea of political necessity may really be to some extent accepted.