Although we do not hear of Massachusetts exploring beyond her own immediate boundaries, yet this was not wholly the case with regard to New Hampshire and Maine. In 1642, Darby Field, an Irishman, with two Indian guides, penetrated as far as the White Mountains, the glistening peaks of which had long been the landmark of the mariner. And Thomas Gorges, the governor of Maine, the same year, with an exploring party, paddled up the Saco, in birch-bark canoes, to the same remarkable mountains, and ascending their summits, beheld the sources of the Connecticut, the Andrascoggen, the Merrimack, and the Saco rivers.
The colony of Connecticut, which was not included in the Massachusetts States Union, continued to increase. The town of Southampton, on Long Island, acknowledged her jurisdiction, as did also Fort Saybrooke, which had been an independent colony until 1643, when Fenwick, who purchased the grant from the original patentees, returning to England, where he entered the parliamentary army, sold his interest in it to Connecticut.
Massachusetts, with all her steadfast virtues and her sterling qualities, had, as we have seen, many sins of oppression and intolerance to answer for; Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson were not the only victims, even before her more wholesale persecution began. Samuel Gorton, who seems to have been an early transcendentalist, was banished from Plymouth, like the other two apostles of liberty, in the winter season, in the midst of a snow-storm, with his wife and sick child. Like all other heretics, he took refuge at Providence, whence, after much trouble, he and his adherents, having purchased a tract of land called Shawomet from Miantonomoh, commenced a settlement. Whether really Miantonomoh sold land which was not his, or whatever the cause might be, two sachems appeared at Boston complaining that they were wrongfully dispossessed of their land. Massachusetts took the matter up warmly; the sachems submitted themselves and their territory to her power, and promised obedience to the ten commandments. The disputed land having thus come into the possession of Massachusetts, Gorton was summoned to Boston to answer to the charge brought against him by the sachems; he refused to obey, and an armed force was then sent to compel him. In terror the women and children fled to the woods, and Gorton and his men prepared to resist force by force. The people of Providence mediated, and in the end, Gorton and his friends agreed to go to Boston, provided they were treated “as free men and neighbours.” But though the promise was given, it was not kept; as prisoners of war they were marched between soldiers to the governor. By him they were treated as criminals, and condemned to the common prison, great rejoicing being held in Boston that “the Lord had delivered them into their hands.” After a month’s imprisonment, they were tried on the charge of blasphemy and as enemies of civil and religious government, and Gorton and seven others were found guilty. Many advocated putting Gorton to death, but finally the seven culprits were banished to seven different towns, there to be kept to hard labour, in irons, under pain of death if they attempted to broach “their abominable and blasphemous heresies.” Their cattle were seized to pay expenses. Spite of the threat of death, it was soon found that they made many converts, and they were then banished, on pain of death, from Massachusetts or Shawomet. Gorton now sailed from Manhattan to London, where the “mystic eloquence” of his preaching won for him many friends among the Independents, and his complaints obtained a hearing.
All this, however, spite of its arbitrariness and injustice, tended in the end to the still further establishment of the liberties of New England. Two years after Gorton’s removal to England, one of his friends returned, bringing letters of safe conduct for himself, from the parliamentary commission, and an order that Gorton’s people should be allowed quiet possession of Shawomet. The government of Massachusetts perceived at once the dangerous position in which this order placed them. Independent of their disinclination to receive again the banished heretics, such an order implied that the parliament had a right to reverse their decisions; and to admit this was a blow at the very life of the commonwealth. A general court was summoned to deliberate, with closed doors, on the present critical emergency, and the decision was, that “allegiance was due to England, also a tenth part of all gold and silver ore,” but that the management of their own local affairs must be kept in their own hands. “If parliament be less inclinable to us,” was their final resolve, in which a threat was implied, “we must wait upon Providence for the preservation of our just liberties.” Winslow was sent over as agent from Massachusetts to the parliament, in which he and Massachusetts had many influential friends; and so well did he negotiate, that the end was an assurance from parliament to this effect: “We encourage no appeals from your justice. We leave you with all the freedom and latitude that may in any respect be duly claimed by you.” Thus did all things work together for the advantage and furtherance of Massachusetts. It is a curious fact that Massachusetts, thus nobly determined in the cause of her liberty and independence, was nevertheless, at this very time, so poor in money, that it was with difficulty that £100 was raised for Winslow’s outfit.
In 1648, a synod was held at Cambridge, for the drawing up of a confession of faith, when a little circumstance occurred which is worth mentioning. A sermon opened the business of the assembly, during which “a snake came into the seat where many of the elders sat. Divers shifted from it, but Mr. Thompson of Braintree, a man of much faith, trod upon its head, and so held it with foot and staff till it was killed. ‘This being so remarkable,’ says Winthrop in his diary, ‘and nothing falling out but by Divine Providence, it is out of doubt the Lord discovered some of his mind in it. The serpent is the devil;’” a type, Winthrop probably thought, of the Rhode Island and Providence heresies, “‘the synod the representative of the churches of Christ in New England.’ The devil had formerly and lately attempted their disturbance and dissolution, but their faith in the seed of the woman overcame him and crushed his head.” The following year, Winthrop, who was then in his tenth term of office of governor, died, and Endicott succeeded him.
In 1651, Cromwell, after his successes in Ireland, wishing to show his good will and regard for New England, offered any of its people who chose to emigrate, estates and settlements in the conquered island. But his offers were declined, “for the emigrants already loved their land of refuge, where their own courage and toils had established the liberties of the gospel, and created the peaceful abundance of thriving republics.” When, also, four years later, he conquered Jamaica, he offered it as a free gift to his favourites, the people of New England.
The war between England and Holland hardly disturbed the tranquillity of the colonies. The western settlements, who would have suffered extreme misery from a combined attack of the Dutch and Indians, wished to reduce New Amsterdam; but Massachusetts, which could deliberate more coolly and wisely, answered, that “the wars of Europe ought not to destroy the happiness of America;” and peaceful intercourse was still preserved with Manhattan.
“The European republics had composed their strife before the fleet which was destined to take possession of the Dutch settlements reached America; and though peace then prevailed between England and France, the English forces, apparently unwilling to return without conquest in one quarter or another, turned northward and took possession of Acadia—an acquisition which no remonstrance or complaint would induce Cromwell to restore, perhaps because he knew that New England would be benefited by its possession.”
We have seen the intolerance of Massachusetts in various cases of unorthodox opinions. Neither sincerity nor purity of life could save the heretical believer from the merciless cruelty of her bigotry. In 1657, Clark, a “pure and tolerant baptist of Rhode Island, was fined, with his companion Holmes, for preaching in Lynn; and Holmes, refusing to pay his fine, was unmercifully whipped. The persecution from which the Pilgrims had fled in England was no whit behind that which now commenced in Massachusetts. Blasphemy was the highest crime in their calendar, and doubt of their faith was blasphemy. To deny that any single book of the Old or New Testament was the infallible word of God, subjected to fines and stripes, and in case of obstinacy, exile or death. Absence from the ministry of the word was punishable by fine.” With reference to this strict observance of the Sabbath, we may give an extract from Winthrop’s journal, on an occasion when a French deputation from Acadia arrived at Boston. “The Lord’s-day they were here,” says Winthrop, “the governor acquainted them with our manner, that all men either come to our public worship or keep themselves quiet in their houses; and finding the place where they were not convenient for them, invited them to his own house, where they continued private until sunset, and made use of such Latin and French books as they had, with the liberty of a private walk in his garden, and so gave no offence.” As we are on the subject of this French embassy, which was of considerable interest to the people of Boston, we may as well mention that Winthrop sent back by them, as a present to M. D’Aulney, governor of Acadia, a sedan chair, which had been given to him a few months before by a munificent freebooter, one Captain Cromwell, who having been, the former year, driven by stress of weather into Plymouth, came the next to Boston; “he and all his men having much money and great store of plate and jewels of great value.” We may suppose that buccaneering was not offensive to the consciences of the good people of Boston, for we find that, having taken up his lodging in a poor thatched house, he was offered the best in the town, which he refused, alleging that “in his mean state that poor man entertained him when others would not, and therefore he would not desert him now, when he might do him good.” On leaving the place, however, he presented Winthrop with the sedan chair we have mentioned, which had been originally designed as a present from the viceroy of Mexico to his sister.
But to return to the persecutions of Massachusetts. “The union of church and state,” says Bancroft justly, “was fast corrupting both; it mingled base ambition with the former; it gave a false direction to the legislation of the latter. The creation of a national, uncompromising church led the congregationalists of Massachusetts to the indulgence of the passions which had disgraced their English persecutors. Laud was justified by the men whom he had wronged.”