|
THE place thus finally selected for the site of the future capital of New England would have been the last chosen
probably, if the settlers had been able to peer into the future, and to realize how contracted the natural limits
would prove for the population destined to gather there. To their eyes, however, there must have appeareci ample
room and verge enough for any town they could picture to themselves, and nature had certainly made the spot fair
and pleasing to all who looked upon it.
The place to which Winthrop and his followers removed, and where they built their city, was a peninsula connected
on the south with the mainland by a narrow strip of ground which just prevented it from being an island. This strip
was known as the “Neck” and continues to bear that title, although the process of filling up on each side has taken
all meaning from the name. On the west of the Neck were long reaches of flats and marshes covered by the tides
at high water, and known to the inhabitants of Boston for more than two hundred years as the Back Bay. Beyond the
flats was the Charles River, sweeping down to the peninsula, and dividing it from the mainland on the north and
east as the stream broadened first into a great inlet and then at last united with the sea. On the east the peninsula
came boldly down into the harbour, and as one followed its line to the south, the “Neck” was reached once more,
with marshes again between it and deep water. Modern energy and the demands of a growing population have dyked
and filled all these flats and marshes, and covered them with houses, the Back Bay becoming the west end of the
city, where wealth and fashion have gone to dwell on gravel spread over the space once claimed by the tides and
inhabited only by sea-birds. On the main part of the peninsula the land rose abruptly into three small hills, which
fell away toward the harbour in gentle slopes. Here the settlers built their houses, sheltered by the hills from
the cold winds of the north and west, and looking out upon the ocean to the southeast. Wharves were soon run. out
into the deep harbour, which afforded an excellent and safe anchorage, and thence from the water’s edge the town
began to grow, moving westward over the hills behind.
The men and women who thus founded Boston did not escape their share of the sufferings which formed the opening
chapter in the history of every American settlement. The first winter was one of great severity. The people lived
on “clams and muscles, and ground-. nuts and acorns,” and the governor was seen giving “the last handful of meal
in the barrell unto a poor man distressed by the wolf at the door.” The current of life, however, was too strong
and full in the Puritan settlement to be checked by the distress which had ruined so many previous attempts, and
when as the hard winter was drawing to a close a ship arrived with relief, there was no further danger of famine.
The tide of immigration also flowed with a strength hitherto unheard of; for it was estimated that in the ten years
which elapsed before England again had a Parliament, twenty thousand Puritan Englishmen followed Winthrop to the
shores of Massachusetts Bay. The rise of the Puritan party in England, the meeting of the Long Parliament, and
the breaking out of the great rebellion put a stop to this emigration, and turned the thoughts of the Puritans
generally, and especially of such men as Hampdeu and Cromwell, from their plan of finding a refuge in the new world
to the nearer work of redeeming the old.
In this volume it would not be appropriate, even if space permitted, to undertake to write the history of the States
immediately founded by these Puritan immigrants, of which Boston was the chief city and the social, political,
and religious centre. On the other hand, it would occupy but few pages to trace the little history of the early
municipal life of Boston. Not many words are needed to tell how the houses began to rise rapidly, and nestle at
the foot and on the slopes of the three small hills of the peninsula, or how the wharves began to stretch out into
the harbour, silent witnesses of commerce and of the fisheries which began with the building of the “Blessing of
the Bay,” in the first year of settlement. The rapid increase of immigration, all of which passed through Boston,
leaving as it went its contribution of population, the opening up of the country to the west, and the consequent
development of trade across the ocean, all hurried the town forward in the pathway of growth and prosperity. Thus
it came to pass that the rude shelters erected at the beginning speedily gave place to more substantial and more
comfortable buildings, that shops were opened, and wealth accumulated with a rapidity little to be hoped for in
a land where nature had done so little to help man. The material rise of the town in stone and wood or in bricks
amid mortar, in the numbers of its people and the value of its trade, is something to be briefly noted in later
times as this history proceeds. That which concerns us to-clay as a real and lasting interest in the early history
of Boston is the development of thought in religion and politics which centred in the little town that sprang up
so quickly on the peninsula which but a few years before had known only the silence of the wilderness or the passing
foot of the savage.
The Puritan party of England, which in its day wrought so many wonderful things, was at the outset distinctly a
party of reform and not a party of revoliition or separation either in Church or State. There was a time, after
Charles had entered upon his experiment of ruling without a Parliament, when it looked as if the chances for reform
were well-nigh hopeless; and it was at this period that English Puritans conceived the idea of establishing in
the new world a Puritan state in which as a last resort they could find refuge from the wrongdoing of the old.
As it turned out, Charles was forced to call another Parliament ; the great rebellion followed, and England was
saved from the eighteenth century despotisnis which ruined the other countries of Europe. But although the emigration
which would have taken all Puritan Englishmen from England never came to pass, yet the state intended for their
refuge was founded none the less, and was populated by, men in all respects own brothers to those who voted with
Pyrn and Hainpden in Parliament, who followed Cromwell at Naseby, and crushed the Scotch at Worcester. Of the quality
of this part of the English people, of their strength of will, of their courage and intellect, it is not necessary
to speak further. They cut their mark too deeply in the history of the English-speaking race all over the world
to need either explanation or descrjption. But the history of Boston in its earlier years presents the picture
of just what these Puritan Englishmen came to when they were unfettered by any of the traditions of the past, or
by the limitations of an old society.
Winthrop and his friends were not Separatists like their forerunners at Plymouth, whose flight from persecution
had led them first across the channel to Holland and then over -seas to America. They were reformers, men who wished
to mould Church and State in England to their own ideas, the ideas of a rational liberty and of a severe but simple
Protestantism. Beyond this they did not go. They left England because they thought a revolution was being effected
which would force her into political despotism on the one hand, and into the Church of Rome on the other. They
thought that Charles and. Laud were carrying England away from the true English standards, and they wished to bring
her back to what they believed to be her right and wonted place. Whether they or Charles were the real innovators
it is not worth while to discuss here. There at least can be no doubt that while the Puritans wished for reforms,
they were convinced that those reforms were in truth but a real conservatism which would draw England. back into
the old ways of freedom and Protestantism, from which she had beeu torn. It was in this spirit that they founded
their colony, took their charter, and bade farewell to their mother church.
When however they had once settled down in their new homes, they found all the conditions of existence utterly
changed. Instead of being confronted at every step by powerful opponents, by habits, traditions, laws, and customs,
they found themselves by the simple act of crossing the ocean able to do exactly what they pleased, without fear
of offending or opposing any one less than three thousand miles away. Under their charter, as they could fairly
interpret it, they might found a State and establish a Church. The Atlantic ocean and the troublous condition of
the times were sufficient to protect them from their enemies at home, if they went to the very verge of independence
or even beyond it. If they had theories or ideas, here on these rocky shores, with only the silence of the boundless
wilderness about them, they could carry them out according to their fancy, and to the utmost range of their logical
conclusion.
The English world was then on the edge of a period of religious and political ferment, when every sort of crude
fanaticism came to the surface, when nothing was too fantastic, and no belief too wild, to find utterance and followers.
It would have been little wonder, if when suddenly set free at such a time, the men who came to Massachusetts had
started some of the crazy experiments which filled men’s minds in England a few years later, and which produced
the agitations and delusions that sprang up so rankly during the great rebellion and under the rule of Cromwell.
The Puritan emigrants to New England, however, were men of different stuff. Agitators and fanatics were among them,
and came to them, but met nowhere with a more chilling reception or with more stern hostility. The Puritans of
Massachusetts, after the usual fashion of their race, were at bottom intensely conservative, lovers of law and
order, and believers in authority. At the same time they had very well-defined views of their own as to what ought
to be done in Church and State in England, and now they suddenly found themselves with nothing to reform, and able
to set up unhampered by any restrictions just such a government and just such churches as they believed England
ought to have. This vast liberty did not lead them into license or into fanciful experiments, but none the less
it had as was inevitable, an immediate and powerful influence upon them. They were driven forward upon the road
marked out for them by their own beliefs with the irresistible force of circumstances. To the Puritans of that
day, religion and a belief in God were living realities so vivid and forceful that they overrode and made trivial
every other thought. Once landed in America their first thought was of religion; aiid for the exercise of religion,
organization was a necessity. They must have anticipated, of course, that there would be no Church in the land
whither they went, but they probably did not realize what this fact meant; for they could not readily have conceived
of the entire absence of an established Church, when in all their lives they had known nothing else. Here, then,
was at once a question of the widest range. There was now nothing to reform in religious matters, but oniy a Church
to be built up just as they listed, new from the very corner-stone. To attempt to re-create the vast fabric of
the Church of England, the product of centuries of growth and of years of compromise, was as impossible as it was
needless. In/ this new land, that which was simplest was best; and partly as a carrying out of their own theories,
and partly through the necessities of the case, Winthrop, Dudley, Johnson, amid John Wilson the pastor adopted
a church covenant, to which allusion has already been made, and which ran as follows, — “In the name of our Lord
Jesus Christ, and in obedience to his holy will, and divine ordinances
“ We whose names are here underwritten, being by his most wise and good providence brought together into this part
of America, in the Bay of Massachusetts; and desirous to unite into one congregation or church, under the Lord
Jesus Christ, our head, in such sort as becometh all thoso whom he has redeemed and sanctified to himself, do hereby
solemnly and, religiously, as in his most holy presence, promise and bind ourselves to walk in all our ways according
to time rule of the Gospel, and in all sincere conformity to his holy ordinances, and, in mutual love and respect
to each other, so near as God shall give us grace.”
Thus was founded the first independent church of New England. Without bishops or priests or presbyters the church
so established was in itself a religious unit, self-sustaining, indepemident, and governed by the worshippers who
formed its congregation. It was a long stride from reforming the Church of England to
the establishment of such a system as this, and yet the mere citange of surrounding conditions made it seem not
a revolution in church government but the only natural and possible thing to do. Nevertheless, it was a thorough
revolution, and it was the first complete severance of one of the ties which bound. New England to Old England.
The matter of religion was as near to the hearts of the body of the people as it was to those of the leaders. A
month after the adoption of the covenant the first business considered by the Court of Assistants was how the ministers
should be maintained; and it then was ordered that houses should be built for them at the public charge. At the
next General Court, held at Boston, in May, 1631, a far more memorable step was taken, one which gave full expression
to the Puritan ideal in Church and State. It was ordered as follows:
"And to the end [that] the body of the commons may be preserved of honest and good men, it was ordered and
agreed that for time to come 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."
Winthrop adds in his Journal that all the freemen of the Commons were sworn to this government; and by this act
Church and State were not merely united but actually were made one. Only religious men and good men were to be
freemen and voters in the new commonwealth, and religion and goodness were determined by membership in the church.
Within the pale of the church it was a plain democratic government, both in things spiritual and things temporal,
where all were equal in the sight of God and the law. But to the outsiders dwelling under the government of the
Massachusetts Bay Company the rule was that of a religious oligarchy, where the clergy determined a man's fitness
both in religion and in politics, an enormous power, which, even after its reality had gone, continued for more
than a century to exercise a dominating influence in New England. So long as the great body of citizens were members
of the church, and therefore freemen of the State, no very serious difficulty was likely to arise; but the moment
of trial was sure to come when a large minority existed who were deprived of political power because they did not
stand inside the pale of the church.
Within the single limitation thus imposed, the development in political institutions went forward with great rapidity.
At the third General Court, held in Boston in 1632, it was agreed that the governor, deputygovernor, and assistants
should be chosen by the whole court including both assistants and freemen, thus recognizing, always within the
bounds of the church, the democratic principle, another vast stride from the political system they had left behind,
and yet again a step which seemed perfectly natural and, in the new conditions, unavoidable. At the same session
of the court it was ordered that two of every plantation should be appointed to confer with the court about the
raising of a public stock; and accordingly two persons were appointed from each of the eight little settlements
which had sprung up in the neighbourhood of Boston. Here again was the planting of a principle quite as memorable
as that which united Church and State in one, and gave a vote to all the freemen; for this provision established
once arid for all in New England the doctrine that no one should be taxed without direct representation in the
body imposing the taxes. In the following year the idea thus planted was expanded into a more definite form of
regular representation by an order that there should be four General Courts every year, but that the whole body
of freemen should be present only at the court for the election of magistrates, while to the other three each town
should send deputies, who should assist in making laws and in governing the Commonwealth. This not only established
representative government, as will be seen, but it also recognized the existence of the unit of the political structure
of New England in the shape of the township. This is not the place to enter into a detailed account of the organization
of the New England town, but its appearance as the unit and source of representation is of too great importance
to be passed over without a word.
The New England township was the corner-stone of the fabric of New England government. It was formed by a group
of persons settling together in a given spot, and taking up a certain amount of land for farming and other purposes.
By a curious process of reversion the Englishmen thus settled in the new world revived in a marked degree the ancient
principles of communal property in land which their earliest progenitors had practised in the forests of Germany
before they set out on their career of conquest. In many of these New England towns, pasture and woodland were
owned in common; and each citizen of the town had certain rights of pasture for sheep or cattle, and certain rights
of cutting wood, which descended like other property from father to son. These communal holdings have gradually
disappeared, but a few have survived even to the present day, a curious monument of the fixity of habits of thought,
and of the survival of the most ancient institutions in the midst of the rushing life of modern democracy. The
other lands of the town, house-lots and farming lands were held in severalty. The houses of the farmers were crusterd
together, for the most part, near the village meeting-house, while the lands which they farmed stretched about
them in all directions to the limits of the townshtp.
More important, however, than communal rights or methods of farming was the system of town government. All the
citiZens of the town assembled in general meeting once a year or oftener, levied taxes, decided on improvements,
and appointed the necessary executive officers to carry out their behests during the ensuing twelve months In the
town meeting all men met on an rquality; every citizen was entitled to free speech and a free vote; and no purer.
democracy, no more absolute example of a people governing themselves, has ever been devised. So long, as the towns
remained small, property equally distributed, and moderate in amount, and the interests of the people few and simple,
this method of government was as practical as it was admirable. When however the communities thus gathered together
reached too great a population for the single assembly, they were obliged to pass out of the stage of the town
meeting into a representative municipal government, although this change did not begin until the first quarter
of the present century was wellnigh spent.
It was in the town meeting that every New Englander became accustomed to deal with public affairs. It was there
that he learned to be a politician and a debater; and it was there also that the principle of union and of federation
was taught, because the union of the towns made the State, and from that it was but a step to understand that the
union of States would make a nation. The town organization was also one of great political force. The difficulty
of combining a sparse population in any political movement was never felt in New England, as in many others of
the American colonies. Her people were from the outset banded together in compact groups, and these groups were
in turn welded together into a commonwealth. The power of political action in the New England townships was one
of the great factors which separated the colonies from England. Even as late as 1809 it was the action of the New
England towns which shook the country, forced the repeal of the embargo, and sent Jefferson, who had always feared
and admired them, into a retirement which was clouded by defeat and disappointment after all his years of triumph.
The system of town government was the same in Boston as in the smallest and remotest village; and what was true
of one was true of all. Thus it came to pass that while with one hand the Puritans set up a political system which
rested on the most rigid religious tests, with the other they planted in the government of town and State, the
purest democracy which has ever been seen.
At this very time also the records of Boston disclose the planting of another principle quite as important as that
adopted either in religion or politics; for it was then generally agreed that "Brother Philemon Porm out shalbe
entreated to become schollinaster for the teaching and nourtering of children with us." Three years later
all the principal inhabitants subscribed for the maintenance of a free school, and at the same time the General
Court laid the foundation of Harvard College. In this way was founded a system of free public-schools which spread
to every town in the Commonwealth, and with them a college was established for the purposes of a higher education.
Thus the Puritans arranged that a narrow creed should be the only test of citizenship, and on one side of it they
placed a democratic government and on the other free schools. They fettered the human mind with their religious
doctrines, while by their system of education and politics they struck off every shackle which could impede the
march of thought. That they were aware of the profound contradiction which underlay this system cannot be supposed.
But whether they realized it or not, they had yoked together three principles which sooner or later must come into
conflict. The history of Massachusetts is the history of the development of these principles, and of the final
triumph of the two which made for freedom over the one which repressed all liberty except within its own narrow
bounds.
It was not long before the system thus established was tested. The Puritan immigration which had begun in 1629
went on with accelerating pace, bringing with it not only scores of hardy farmers, mechanics, and
fishermen, but also some of the political and religious leaders of the reform movement in England. So formidable
was the emigration, that in 1633 an order was issued by the Privy Council to stop ships on the Thames in which
some of the most distinguished members of the country party were supposed to be embLrking for New England. There
was indeed a rumor that, even Hampr den, Pyrn, and Cromwell were then contemplating a flight to the new world.
Among the most eminent of the many eminent clergymen who came at this time was John Cotton of Boston in old England,
who had preached there for more than twenty years in the famous church of St. Botoiph. He was a man of brilliant
talents, who left a considerable mark in the history of the colony; but his first attempt to guide the people of
Massachusetts was far from a success. In the election sermon which he delivered in 1634, soon after his arrival,
he maintained that a niagistrate ought not to be turned into a private man without just cause. The matter was taken
up very seriously, as any utterance from such a man as Cotton was sure to be, and the result was that the General
Court put Winthrop aside and elected a new governor. No more conclusive answer could have been given to Cotton's
doctrine. He had unwittingly come against time democratic principle which had been so carefully planted, and which
had taken root so firmly in the new soil that the brilliant preacher, fresh from England and from the old conditions
of society, probably did not even know of its existence.
A year later two men more notable than Cotton, and fated to fill much larger places than he in the history of the
English people of that time, arrived in Boston. One was the noted Puritan preacher, Hugh Peter, destined to return
to England to play a prominent part in the troubles which ensued, and finally to pay the penalty of his distinction
by death on the scaffold. Time other was Henry Vane the younger, doomed like Peter to the same end on the scaffold,
but a man of very different mould and fibre. Young and brilliant, of distinguished family, for he was the son and
heir of Sir Henry Vane, the Comptroller of the King's Household, and had been engaged already in foreign affairs,
Henry Vane threw himself into the affairs of the infant colony with eager enthusiasm, and with a touch of the fanaticism
which never deserted him throughout all his stormy career.
For men who loved excitement and agitation, Peter and Vane had come at a fortunate time, as the colony was on the
verge of the first of the conflicts by which the Puritan system was to be tested, and the right of Massachusetts
to exist as a State was to be determined. The large immigration which had poured in since 1629, had. brought with
it, as might have been expected from an immigration of men who sought reforms both in Church and State, many persons
with views unsettled by the condition of the times, and with brains seething with every sort of scheme for the
solution of the religious and political difficulties of humanity. The new world gave of course free scope to all
these ideas, and the spirit of unrest in the colony was shown first by the replacing of Winthrop by Dudley as governor,
and then after the latter's year of office the. election of John Haynes in. his place. There were distractions
and differences both political and religious in the infant Commonwealth; and these differences and distractions
were a source of much anxiety to the leaders of the community, and above all to the ministers, who formed the ruling
element both in Church and State. Vane and Peter threw themselves at once into the controversies which had arisen;
and before three months bad expired they had procured a meeting in Boston of magistrates and ministers, in order
to effect "a more firm and friendly uniting of minds." The meeting declared itself in favour of a more
rigid administration of the government. Winthrop, who was by far the wisest head among them all, was charged with
having displayed "over-much lenity;" and the ministers delivered a formal opinion, "that strict
discipline both in criminal offenses and martial affairs was more needful in plantations than in settled states,
as tending to the honor and safety of the Gospel." The manner in which the policy thus laid down was carried
out, embodies the history of the Puritan colony at that period, and was the turning-point in its early progress.
From the beginning it seems to have been assumed by the Puritans that they should exercise an absolute power in
determining who should dwell within their boundaries, with the right to expel any person whose presence they deemed
prejudicial to the welfare of Church or State. They had used this authority in the case of Morton and other obscure
but disorderly persons whom they deemed harmful from a secular point of view, and also in the case of the Browns,
who seemed to be hostile to the religious establishment projected by the Puritans. Their theory, however, was soon
to be put to a much severer test. Among those who came to Boston in 1631 was Roger Williams, a clergyman, and.
even then a man of some repute. He was asked to act as teacher at the First Church in the absence of Wilson, but
declined because the members would not make humble confession of sin for having communed with the Church of England.
From Boston he went to Salem, where he met with some success, then to Plymouth, where he was not equally fortunate,
and thence he returned to Salem in 1634, the Plymouth people fearing that if he remained "he would run a course
of rigid Separation and Anabaptistry." By this time his views had become more pronounced, and he undertook
to deny the right of the magistrate to act outside of civil matters, and to question the rights of the colonists
to their lands under the charter as against the savages. This states the cause of his offending in the language
of his champions; but no statement can disguise the fact that these declarations whether right or wrong, whether
the utterances of a seditious agitator or the pleadings of a noble spirit in favour of soul-liberty, struck at
the very foundations of the State which had been established. He was therefore sentenced by the General Court to
depart out of their jurisdiction within six weeks; but being allowed to stay till spring he continued to propagate
his doctrines, and seven days after the "more firm and friendly uniting of minds" among the magistrates
and ministers, Captain Underhill was despatcheci to seize him and ship him to England. Williams however escaped,
and made his way to the Narragansett country, where he founded what afterward became the colony of Rhode Island,
and thus passed out of the history of Boston.
Much more serious than this affair, however, was the controversy which arose a year later, and which grew out of
the preaching of Mrs. Hutchinson. Ann Hutchinson was a clever woman, ready in speech and argument, and restless
and active in mind. She began by drawing about her the principal women of Boston to discuss the sermons delivered
by the ministers and lecturers, and it soon appeared that according to Mrs. Hutehinson the ministers and elders
preached a covenant of works instead of a covenant of grace. It is difficult to understand at the present day the
excitement which arose from this seemingly harmless difference. Governor Vane and John Cotton espoused the cause
of Mrs. Hutch inson, while Winthrop and Wilson opposed it. The Boston sentiment was Hutcliinsonian, but the outlying
towns stood by the old leaders. Church and State were shaken and riven by the controversy, and at the spring elections
in 1637, after a most exciting debate, Vane was defeated and Winthrop re-elected, while Mrs. Hutchinson was left
in the hands of her enemies.
This victory was won by the efforts and influence of the ministers, and they used the fruits of their victory after
the fashion of priesthoods in all periods. It is not necessary to enter into the details of Mrs. Hutchinson's trial
and exile. Without being subjected to actual bodily harm she was relentlessly persecuted, and driven with her followers
from the borders of Massachusetts. Two of her sympathizers were disfranchised and fined; eight were disfranchised,
two fined, and three banished, while seventy-six others were disarmed. Hitherto the Puritans had dealt with intruders
and outsiders who had threatened to invade and disturb their community; but this time they dealt with their own
people, freemen of the State and communicants of the church. By their victory they established their system beyond
the reach of attack for many years to come; and it was not until new forces had gathered that they were again called
upon to meet a similar emergency.
In the case of Roger Williams it is not easy to show that the government of Massachusetts did not have a perfectly
good case against him on purely secular grounds. Church and State, politics and religion, were at that time and
place so intermingled that it is extremely difficult to separate offences against the one from offences against
the other. Williams, however, questioned the powers of the magistrates and the rights of the people to their land.
The agitation of such doctrines as these struck at the very existence of the State. It was a critical period in
their relations with England. The Puritans believed in law and order, and they were determined to have a vigorous
and efficient government, which they rightly deemed essential to their existence. They were clearly entitled to
defend themselves against all persons who by their words or deeds threatened the stability of the Commonwealth.
In the case of Mrs. Hutchinson the conditions were different. Her offences were purely religious and doctrinal.
The authorities argued, of course, that false doctrine was dangerous not only to morals but to the State. When
Church and State were one, this was in a sense true; but the methods adopted to put down these differences of opinion
were none the less the methods of religious persecution, and Mrs. Hutehinson was pursued with all the ferocity
characteristic of a ruling priesthood in all lands and periods, and under all forms of religious faith. There can
be no doubt that so far as the upbuilding of a strong and efficient State was concerned, this policy was entirely
successful. To justify it on abstract grounds is impossible, and even its political necessity was, to say the least,
doubtful. Whether rightly or wrongly, however, this system of harsh repression was the one adopted; and it is to
be feared that its authors were little concerned 'with the need of justification. They were satisfied that they
were right, and they knew that they were successful.
It is as easy as it is familiar, in this connection, to denounce the Puritans of Massachusetts as harsh and unfeeling
bigots, who persecuted and banished the liberal and open-minded spirits who came among them. But it is too often
forgotten that at that period the world, according to our conceptions, was a narrow and bigoted world, in which
differences in religious opinion were supposed to go to the very roots of everything. It is not remembered, moreover,
that the Puritans did not come to Massachusetts to obtain for everybody "freedom to worship God," but
to get freedom to worship God in their own particular way. They were reformers at home, not Separatists; and when
they landed in Massachusetts, although they did not attempt to copy the Church which they had left, it never occurred
to their minds that any Christian State worth having could exist without an established Church of some kind, because
that was a condition of affairs quite outside the range of their experience. They accordingly established a Church
of their own, and made it one with their State, while hand
in hand with the establishment of this religious State went the building up of the body politic. Whoever touched
the one touched the other, and according to the Puritan theory was to be dealt with unhesitatingly by the strong
arm of the civil power.
Little more remains to be told of this crisis in the early history of the colony. Winthrop and Vane conducted and
concluded a war of portentous pamphlets; shortly after Vane departed, honorably dismissed with divers volleys of
cannon and musketry, and then the Hutchinsonian malcontents were trampled out. It seemed as if after such a victory
as this the church could rest in peace; but unfortunately for them, actual conditions in the long run made peace
impossible. Within less than ten years the established Church was struggling with the Baptists, and inflicting
fines and excommunication upon them, to its own satisfaction no doubt, but with very little effect in the way of
putting down the dissent.
During these ten years, also, the other controlling forces in the Puritan commonwealth were at work, and the development
of the State, both politically and socially, was steady and advancing. The year after the departure of the followers
of Mrs. Hutchinson the hand of power was stretched out against the Puritans, as they had stretched out their hands
against their own enemies. The Puritan settlements had grown so fast, and become so important, that they attracted
the attention of the government in England; and the Lords Commissioners of Plantations sent out a sharp demand
for the return of the charter, which they perceived too late had become the foundation of an independent State.
The people of Massachusetts, few and poor though they were, had. in full measure the courage of their convictions;
and as they appeared at their worst in dealing with Mrs. Hutchinson, they appeared at their best in facing the
King of England. They began to arm, and were ready to resist force (if force were attempted) in defence of their
charter. But they were also wise in their generation; and before precipitating a conflict they determined to take
the chances of delay, and to see what could be done by piecing out the lion's skin with the fox's. An humble petition
was sent to England, and under the wise and politic leadership of Governor Winthrop the direct issue was "avoided
and protracted." Delay served their turn ; for there were other Puritans at home with whom Lords Commissioners
were quite unable to deal, and who soon absorbed the entire attention of the King and his advisers. Thus the Massaclmsetts
charter 'was saved, and the Puritan State was able to go on in its independence for another fifty years.
In 1641 the "Body of Liberties," or code of laws, was adopted by the people of Massachusetts. A very
memorable code it was, in which may be found the germ of many of the great principles of legislation upon which
American government rests today. During this time, too, another political question was settled which also had an
important bearing upon American methods of transacting public business. Boston by that time had grown sufficiently
to have streets; and wandering through those streets and pastures, in 1636, there was discovered a stray sow, which
was taken and held by the finder, Captain Keayne. Then, after many months, the owner appeared; and thence grew
a mighty dispute which was carried into the General Court, and which resulted in the division of the General Court
into two houses, one of magistrates and the other of deputies.
In 1643, however, the year before this legislative division took place, a much greater event occurred, and one
fruitful of interest to the student of American history; for in that year was formed the New England Confederation
or Union, consisting of the four colonies of Massachusetts, Plymouth, New Haven, and Connecticut, It would be inappropriate
to enter here into any discussion of this far-reaching subject, or to trace the history of the New England Confederation
which made these four colonies a great power at the time, and which served as an example for a similar union upon
a much larger scale. But no history of Boston would be complete without noting that the little Congress composed
of the representatives of the four colonies met at Boston on Sept. 17, 1643, and there planted the federal principle
of government which on Sept. 17, 1787, was again given to the world in the Constitution of the United States.
During these years, too, relations were opened with the other colonies on the Atlantic seaboard, and the trade
of Boston stretched out in every direction north and south. One of the most memorable of these relations was that
with the two Frenchmen, La Tour and Aulnay, who struggled for dominion in Acadia. The story is a long and intricate
one, of little interest now, although not lacking a picturesque and attractive side; but it has an enduring importance
as showing that to the representatives of foreign States, Massachusetts took the attitude of a completely independent
government, and dealt with Aulnay and La Tour just as independently, and in the same manner, as Charles and Buckingham
dealt with the Huguenots and the French monarchy.
During all this political and material progress the work of education went on. In 1642, the first Commencement
was held at Harvard College, where "nine young men of good hope performed their acts so as to give good proof
of their proficiency in the tongues and arts." In 1645, we find in Winthrop's Journal that "divers free
schools were erected," and that Boston made an order to allow forever fifty pounds and a house to the master,
and thirty pounds and a house to an usher, an example rapidly followed by the other towns. Two years later the
free school was made the subject of a general law of the Commonwealth. It was then ordered that as it was "one
chief project of that old deluder Satan to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures . . . every township in
this jurisdiction after the Lord hath increased them to the number of fifty householders shall then forthwith appoint
one within their town to teach all such children as shall resort to him to write and read;" and it was further
ordered that when "any town shall increase to the number of one hundred families they shall set up a grammar
school the master thereof being able to instruct youth so far as they may be fitted for the university." No
nobler legislation than this is to be found in the laws of any infant State but the men who framed it were blind
to the fact that such legislation made impossible the religious system which they had also set up.
Two years later John Winthrop died. He had prevailed over every attack made upon him, and he died in the fulness
of his fame and popularity, mourned and beloved by the entire Commonwealth. Winthrop had shown himself to be a
really great man, - one who took high rank in that small class of the founders of States, whose achievements have
been most difficult and at the same time of most value to their fellowmen. He was buried with "great solemnity
and honor" in what is now known as the King's Chapel buryingground. Under his leadership and influence the
lines on which the Puritan State was to move had been all marked out. The next stage in the history of Boston shows
the passage of the Puritan town and colony through the period of Puritan ascendeney and decline in the English-speaking
world until after much suffering and tribulation the quiet of the provincial time was reached.
|