Saybrook, at the mouth of the Connecticut River, was purchased by the Connecticut federation in 1644. In order to compensate herself, Connecticut levied toll on every vessel passing up the river. Massachusetts owned the valley town of Springfield, and entered complaint before the commissioners (1647) that Connecticut had no right to tax Massachusetts vessels trading with a Massachusetts town. Two years later (1649) the commissioners decided in favor of Connecticut; whereupon Massachusetts levied both export and import duties at Boston designed to hamper the trade of her sister colonies; at the same time she demanded that because of her greater size she be allowed three commissioners, and insisted that the power of the federal body be reduced. This action created great hostility, and threatened at one time to break up the union. By 1654 the contention had been allowed to drop on both sides, and duties on intercolonial trade ceased.
68. Repression of the Quakers (1656-1660).
Treatment of the Quakers.
During the remainder of the Commonwealth period the most serious question which arose in New England was what to do with the Quakers. In the theocracy of the seventeenth century the attitude of the sect was both theologically and politically well calculated to arouse hostility. They would strip all formalities from religion, they would recognize no priestly class, they would not take up arms in the common defence, would pay no tithes and take no oath of allegiance, they doubted the efficacy of baptism, had no veneration for the Sabbath, and had a large respect for the right of individual judgment in spiritual matters. They were aggressive and stubborn, and, goaded on by persecution, broke out into fantastic displays of opposition to the State religion. In England four thousand of them were in jail at one time. When Anne Austin and Mary Fisher arrived in Boston (1656) from England, by way of the Barbados, as a vanguard of the Quaker missionary army, the colonial authorities were aghast with horror. The adventurous women were shipped back to the Barbados, and a law was enacted against "all Quakers, Ranters, and other notorious heretics," providing for their flogging and imprisonment at hard labor. Despite this harsh treatment, the Quakers continued to arrive. Roger Williams said, when applied to by Massachusetts to harry them out of Rhode Island: where they are "most of all suffered to declare themselves freely, and only opposed by arguments in discourse, there they least of all desire to come.... They are likely to gain more followers by the conceit of their patient sufferings than by consent to their pernicious sayings." Nevertheless, Rhode Island was and is the stronghold of the Friends in New England.
In 1657 it was enacted that Quakers who had once been sent away and returned, should have their ears lopped off, and for the third offence should have their tongues pierced with red-hot irons. Banishment on pain of death was recommended by the federal commissioners in 1658; and in 1659-1660 four Quakers lost their lives by hanging on Boston Common. Public sentiment revolted at these spectacles, and in 1660 the Massachusetts death-law was repealed, and Quakers were thereafter subjected to nothing worse than being flogged in the several towns; even this gradually ceased, with the growth of a more humane spirit. In Connecticut the sect suffered but little persecution, and in Rhode Island none; while Plymouth and New Haven were nearly as harsh in their treatment as Massachusetts.
New England in the hands of the council for the plantations.
The restoration of royalty in England (1660) began a new epoch in the history of the colonies. Their control was placed in the hands of a council for the plantations, and twelve privy councillors were designated to take New England in charge. The Quakers had seized the opportunity of gaining an early hearing from the new king, who was charitably disposed towards them. In its address to Charles, the Massachusetts court expatiated on the factious spirit of the Quakers; but the king replied that while he meant well by the colonies, he desired that hereafter the Quakers be sent to England for trial,—a desire which was as a matter of course disregarded.
69. Royal Commission (1660-1664).
It is not surprising that the king was disposed to look with suspicion upon the men of New England. He had been told that the confederacy was "a war combination made by the four colonies when they had a design to throw off their dependence on England, and for that purpose." |The king suspects New England's loyalty.| The New Englanders, too, had been somewhat slow to proclaim his ascendancy; while two of the judges who had sentenced his father to death, Goffe and Whalley, were screened from royal justice by the people of New Haven, and afterwards by those of Hadley, a Massachusetts town in the Connecticut valley. Massachusetts had been bold enough when the home government was so distracted by other affairs as to render attention to the colonies impracticable; now that Charles appeared to be turning his attention to America a more politic course was pursued. Simon Bradstreet, a leading layman, and John Norton, prominent among the ministers, were sent to England to make peace with the Crown, and soon returned (1662) with a gracious answer, which, however, was coupled with an order to the court to grant all "freeholders of competent estate" the right of suffrage and office-holding, "without reference to their opinion or profession," to allow the Church of England to hold services, to administer justice in the name of the king, and to compel all inhabitants to swear allegiance to him. The court decreed that legal papers should thereafter run in the king's name; but all other matters in the royal mandate were referred to a committee which failed to report upon them.
Arrival of royal commissioners.