accusation seems to have been based upon the fact that he used the Book
of Common Prayer. His men so far maintained the ancient customs of
merry England as to plant a Maypole eighty feet high, about which they
frolicked with the redskins, while furthermore they taught them the
use of firearms and sold them muskets and rum. This was positively
dangerous, and in the summer of 1628 the settlers at Merrymount were
dispersed by Miles Standish. Morton was sent to England, but returned
the next year, and presently again repaired to Merrymount.

By this time other settlements were dotted about the coast. There were
a few scattered cottages or cabins at Nantasket and at the mouth of the
Piscataqua, while Samuel Maverick had fortified himself on Noddle's
Island, and William Blackstone already lived upon the Shawmut peninsula,
since called Boston. These two gentlemen were no friends to the
Puritans; they were churchmen and representatives of Sir Ferdinando
Gorges.

The case was very different with another of these earliest settlements,
which deserves especial mention as coming directly in the line of
causation which led to the founding of Massachusetts by Puritans. For
some years past the Dorchester adventurers--a small company of merchants
in the shire town of Dorset--had been sending vessels to catch fish off
the New England coast. In 1623 these men conceived the idea of planting
a small village as a fishing station, and setting up a church and
preacher therein, for the spiritual solace of the fishermen and sailors.
In pursuance of this scheme a small party occupied Cape Ann, where after
two years they got into trouble with the men of Plymouth. Several grants
and assignments had made it doubtful where the ownership lay, and
although this place was not near their own town, the men of Plymouth
claimed it. The dispute was amicably arranged by Roger Conant, an
independent settler who had withdrawn from Plymouth because he did not
fully sympathize with the Separatist views of the people there. The
next step was for the Dorchester adventurers to appoint Conant as their
manager, and the next was for them to abandon their enterprise, dissolve
their partnership, and leave the remnant of the little colony to shift
for itself. The settlers retained their tools and cattle, and Conant
found for them a new and safer situation at Naumkeag, on the site of the
present Salem. So far little seemed to have been accomplished; one more
seemed added to the list of failures.

But the excellent John White, the Puritan rector of Trinity Church in
Dorchester, had meditated carefully about these things. He saw that
many attempts at colonization had failed because they made use of unfit
instruments, "a multitude of rude ungovernable persons, the very scum of
the land." So Virginia had failed in its first years, and only succeeded
when settled by worthy and industrious people under a strong government.
The example of Plymouth, as contrasted with Wessagusset, taught a
similar lesson. We desire, said White, "to raise a bulwark against the
kingdom of Antichrist." Learn wisdom, my countrymen, from the ruin which
has befallen the Protestants at Rochelle and in the Palatinate; learn
"to avoid the plague while it is foreseen, and not to tarry as they did
till it overtook them." The Puritan party in England was numerous and
powerful, but the day of strife was not far off and none might foretell
its issue. Clearly it was well to establish a strong and secure retreat
in the New World, in case of disaster in the Old. What had been done at
Plymouth by a few men of humble means might be done on a much greater
scale by an association of leading Puritans, including men of wealth and
wide social influence. Such arguments were urged in timely pamphlets, of
one of which White is supposed to have been the author. The matter was
discussed in London, and inquiry was made whether fit men could be found
"to engage their persons in the voyage." "It fell out that among others
they lighted at last on Master Endicott, a man well known to divers
persons of good note, who manifested much willingness to accept of the
offer as soon as it was tendered." All were thereby much encouraged, the
schemes of White took definite shape, and on the 19th of March, 1628, a
tract of land was obtained from the Council for New England, consisting
of all the territory included between three miles north of the Merrimack
and three miles south of the Charles in one direction, and the Atlantic
and Pacific Oceans in the other. [Sidenote: John White and his noble
scheme]

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.

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.

[Illustration: Founding of Harvard College]

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.

We now begin to see how the spreading of the New England colonization,
and the founding of distinct communities, was hastened by these
differences of opinion on theological questions or on questions
concerning the relations between church and state. Of Mrs. Hutchinson's
friends and adherents, some went northward, and founded the towns of
Exeter and Hampton. Some time before Portsmouth and Dover had been
settled by followers of Mason and Gorges. In 1641 these towns were added
to the domain of Massachusetts, and so the matter stood until 1679, when
we shall see Charles II. marking them off as a separate province, under
a royal government. Such were the beginnings of New Hampshire. Mrs.
Hutchinson herself, however, with the rest of her adherents, bought
the island of Aquedneck from the Indians, and settlements were made at
Portsmouth and Newport. After a quarter of a century of turbulence,
these settlements coalesced with Williams's colony at Providence, and
thus was formed the state of Rhode Island. After her husband's death in
1642, Mrs. Hutchinson left Aquedneck and settled upon some land to the
west of Stamford and supposed to be within the territory of the New
Netherlands. There in the following year she was cruelly murdered by
Indians, together with nearly all her children and servants, sixteen
victims in all. One of her descendants was the illustrious Thomas
Hutchinson, the first great American historian, and last royal governor
of Massachusetts.

To the dangers arising from the ill-will of the crown, and from these
theological quarrels, there was added the danger of a general attack by
the savages. Down to this time, since the landing of the Pilgrims at
Plymouth, the settlers of New England had been in no way molested by the
natives. Massasoit's treaty with the Pilgrims was scrupulously observed
on both sides, and kept the Wampanoags quiet for fifty-four years. The
somewhat smaller tribe which took its name from the _Massawachusett_, or
Great Hill, of Milton, kept on friendly terms with the settlers about
Boston, because these red men coveted the powerful aid of the white
strangers in case of war with their hereditary foes the Tarratines, who
dwelt in the Piscataqua country. It was only when the English began
to leave these coast regions and press into the interior that trouble
arose. The western shores of Narragansett bay were possessed by
the numerous and warlike tribe of that name, which held in partial
subjection the Nyantics near Point Judith. To the west of these, and
about the Thames river, dwelt the still more formidable Pequots, a tribe
which for bravery and ferocity asserted a preeminence in New England
not unlike that which the Iroquois league of the Mohawk valley was fast
winning over all North America east of the Mississippi. North of the
Pequots, the squalid villages of the Nipmucks were scattered over the
beautiful highlands that stretch in long ridges from Quinsigamond to
Nichewaug, and beyond toward blue Monadnock. Westward, in the lower
Connecticut valley, lived the Mohegans, a small but valiant tribe, now
for some time held tributary to their Pequot cousins, and very restive
under the yoke. The thickly wooded mountain ranges between the
Connecticut and the Hudson had few human inhabitants. These hundred
miles of crag and forest were a bulwark none too wide or strong against
the incursions of the terrible Mohawks, whose name sent a shiver of fear
throughout savage New England, and whose forbearance the Nipmucks and
Mohegans were fain to ensure by a yearly payment of blackmail. Each
summer there came two Mohawk elders, secure in the dread that Iroquois
prowess had everywhere inspired; and up and down the Connecticut valley
they seized the tribute of weapons and wampum, and proclaimed the last
harsh edict issued from the savage council at Onondaga. The scowls that
greeted their unwelcome visits were doubtless nowhere fiercer than among
the Mohegans, thus ground down between Mohawk and Pequot as between the
upper and the nether millstone. [Sidenote: From the Indians: the Pequot
supremacy]

Among the various points in which civilized man surpasses the savage
none is more conspicuous than the military brute force which in the
highest civilization is always latent though comparatively seldom
exerted. The sudden intrusion of English warfare into the Indian world
of the seventeenth century may well have seemed to the red men a
supernatural visitation, like the hurricane or the earthquake. The
uncompromising vigour with which the founders of Massachusetts carried
on their work was viewed in some quarters with a dissatisfaction which
soon thrust the English migration into the very heart of the Indian
country.

The first movement, however, was directed against the encroachments of
the New Netherlands. In October, 1634, some men of Plymouth, led by
William Holmes, sailed up the Connecticut river, and, after bandying
threats with a party of Dutch who had built a rude fort on the site of
Hartford, passed on and fortified themselves on the site of Windsor.
Next year Governor Van Twiller sent a company of seventy men to drive
away these intruders, but after reconnoitring the situation the Dutchmen
thought it best not to make an attack. Their little stronghold at
Hartford remained unmolested by the English, and, in order to secure
the communication between this advanced outpost and New Amsterdam, Van
Twiller decided to build another fort at the mouth of the river, but
this time the English were beforehand. Rumours of Dutch designs may
have reached the ears of Lord Say and Sele and Lord Brooke--"fanatic
Brooke," as Scott calls him in "Marmion"--who had obtained from the
Council for New England a grant of territory on the shores of the Sound.
These noblemen chose as their agent the younger John Winthrop, son of
the Massachusetts governor, and this new-comer arrived upon the scene
just in time to drive away Van Twiller's vessel and build an English
fort which in honour of his two patrons he called "Say-Brooke."

Had it not been for seeds of discontent already sown in Massachusetts,
the English hold upon the Connecticut valley might perhaps have been
for a few years confined to these two military outposts at Windsor and
Saybrook. But there were people in Massachusetts who did not look with
favour upon the aristocratic and theocratic features in its polity. The
provision that none but church-members should vote or hold office was
by no means unanimously approved. We see it in the course of another
generation putting altogether too much temporal power into the hands of
the clergy, and we can trace the growth of the opposition to it until in