Cobb, Rise of Religious Liberty in America. Ch. V

Under this head are grouped all the New England colonies, with the exception of Rhode Island. In them all the Congregational Church was established by law, with more or less of proscription of other forms of worship. This establishment was not by charter or by imposition of external authority, but by act of the colonial legislature at the beginning of the colonies, in conformity with the will of the great majority of the people. Each colony had a spirit of its own in its regard for the established order, in some instances sharply contrasting it with its neighbors. Theocratic Massachusetts and New Haven reverenced the order as the chosen instrument of God, with which a man could interfere only to his peril, and on conformity to which all civil rights depended. Plymouth and Connecticut loved it as a seemly thing and as conducive to religious and social prosperity, but at the same time recognized the claims of charity toward men of other minds. Of this spirit also was New Hampshire, though for half a century merged with Massachusetts, and afterward vexed by foolish royal governors attempting forcible conversion to the Church of England.

When the men of Scrooby fled to Holland from English persecution, they had no thought of giving up their English citizenship. From 1609 to 1617 they remained in quiet enjoyment of Dutch toleration. But, though never disturbed by the authorities for the sake of religion, they were unsatisfied to remain in a foreign land and become merged in population

alien to their own English stock. Though driven out of England, they were still English at heart and desired to live and to bring up their children under the English flag.

With this desire strong within them they greeted the news of the planting of Virginia with the hope that in the bounds of this infant colony there might be found for them a place, where they could at once be subjects of their own king and enjoy religious freedom. So moved, in 1617, they sent Carver and Cushing to London with propositions toward settlement in Virginia. These propositions, while not evading the Separatist view of Church polity, yet asserted their agreement with the creed of the Anglican Church and their desire of spiritual communion with its members. In civil matters they declared their entire subjection to the king, with “obedience in all things; active, if the thing commanded be not against God’s word; or passive, if it be.” This first informal application to the Virginia company was favorably received, under the kindly influence of the secretary, Sir Edwin Sandys, a man of large liberality of spirit.

On the report of their agents the Pilgrims at Leyden, in December of the same year, transmitted by the hands of Robinson and Brewster their formal request of the company to be allowed to embark for Virginia. With this request was coupled a petition to the king, which brought temporary disaster to their enterprise. The petition sought a formal allowance to them of liberty in religious matters in their contemplated settlement in America. Strange to say, James, whose hatred for presbytery and addiction to prelacy were well known, hesitated as to the character of his reply. Both the king and Villiers seem at first to have looked upon the request with some degree of favor. At all events, they were unwilling to return a negative without advice. This advice they sought from the greatest man of the age, Lord Bacon, whose greatness was equalled, according to the epigram, by his meanness. His courtier-like sycophancy was abundantly able to silence a principle, which his philosophical intellect

might discern, in order to give voice to sentiments more pleasing to his royal master. It is hard to believe that so wise a man as Bacon could have failed to see that toleration at least could be demanded as a natural right; but he failed to express any such thought in his “Letter of Advice” — a letter which both disappointed the Pilgrims and established the administrative policy in religious matters through the colonial era. He says: “Discipline by bishops is fittest for monarchy of all others. The tenets of separatists and sectaries are full of schism and inconsistent with monarchy. The king will beware of Anabaptists, Brownists, and others of their kinds: a little connivency sets them on fire. For the discipline of the Church in those parts (the colonies) it will be necessary that it agree with that which is settled in England, else it will make a schism and rent in Christ’s coat, which must be seamless, . . . and for that purpose it will be fit that they be subordinate to some bishop or bishoprick of this realm. . . . If any transplant themselves into plantations abroad who are known schismatics, outlaws, or criminal persons, they should be sent back upon the first notice: such persons are not fit to lay the foundation of a new colony.”¹ So Bacon demeaned himself to compose a variation on his master’s favorite theme: “No Bishop, no King.” James listened only too willingly to this advice and refused the petition of the Pilgrims.

But they were not discouraged by this failure, nor disposed to give up their project of removal to America. They presently entered into arrangements with a number of London merchants, as yet not incorporated into a chartered company, who were to act as agents for the colony. These merchants, afterward chartered as the “Plymouth Company,” were to provide means of transportation and to attend to matters of supply and the sale of such produce as the emigrants should send to England. They presumed upon no steps of government nor marked out for the colonists any lines of either

civil or ecclesiastical procedure. Under such purely business arrangement with their London principals, the Pilgrims set out upon their voyage to New England; without any charter but their own will, without any consent or cognizance of the king, free to decide for themselves as to their local civil and religious institutions. They owed nothing to grants of power or to royal favor: but went forth in sublime confidence that God would be their guide and defence.

As to their churchly condition, it must be borne in mind that their emigration was that of a Church already constituted. In their own intention that band of men and women, who filled the cabins of the Mayflower, were but the advance company of the Church of English Separatists at Leyden, whose remaining brethren were to follow them as soon as might be possible. Their beloved pastor Robinson, who longed for America and “died without the sight,” remained at Leyden only for the sake of that portion of the flock which was left. So we do not read of any organization of a Church when the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth. “These first inhabitants immediately formed themselves into a body politic, but they did not embody into a new Church state, looking upon it as unnecessary, as being a branch of the English Church at Leyden; and they expected the pastor and rest of the Church to follow them into the wilderness.” This is the language of J. Cotton, Esq., in his “Narrative of the Plymouth Church,” printed in 1760.¹ He also says that the failure of the expected balance of the Church was due to the “opposition of several of the merchant adventurers in England, who, not liking their principles or strictness in religion, would not provide shipping and money.”

The famous Mayflower compact, made when already the stern coast of New England had lifted itself in wintry garb before their sight, was solely for the direction of their civil affairs. So far as their local government was concerned this compact was an ordinance of a pure democracy. By it, they

say, “we solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic.” With the general purpose and practice under this compact, the Plymouth company, chartered by the king in the following year, did not interfere. Under it for the first score of years the governing body of the colony was the gathering of all the colonists. This simple device afterward gave way for convenience’ sake to the general court, composed of deputies from the several towns.

Hutchinson, speaking of the Mayflower compact, says:¹ “Some of the inferior class among them muttered that, when they should get ashore, one man would be as good as another, and they would do what seemed good in their own eyes. This led the graver sort to counsel how to prevent it. One great reason of this covenant seems to have been of a mere moral nature, that they might remove all scruples of inflicting necessary punishments, even capital ones, seeing that all had voluntarily subjected themselves to them.”²

With the exception of the English statutes touching religious matters, the Plymouth men were well content to accept the opinion of Lord Chief Justice Holt, that, in case of an uninhabited country newly found out and settled by English subjects, all laws in force in England are in force there.

They, as Mr. Hubbard said, were willing to be subject unto them, though in a foreign land, only adding thereto “some particular municipal laws of their own, suitable to their constitution.” “They seem cautiously to have preserved as much of their natural liberty as could be consistent with the maintenance of government and order.” (Hutchinson.)

As to the rights of conscience and worship, they remained true to the principles, which in England gave them the name of Separatists¹ (as separating from the establishment), and which caused their afflictions and exile. Happily for them, they were not greatly tried during the early period by questions of dissent from the religious and Church order, under which by common consent they lived. They never established that order by any civil law, and what the magistrates did in Church affairs was in their character of Church members and not in their civil capacity.

Moreover, they never, after the example of the Puritans, made Church membership a condition of citizenship.² At first, in their colonial democratic assemblies every man could speak his mind and vote. Afterward it was ordered that candidates for the franchise should be propounded by the deputies to the general court, “being such as were approved by the freemen of the town where they live.” The law of 1671 said that none should be admitted freemen but “such as were 21 years old, of sober and peaceable conversation, orthodox in fundamentals, and of £20 ratable estate.”³

The purpose of the Plymouth colony was, indeed, predominantly religious, but it was uniquely confined to obtaining for themselves the freedom which had been denied at home.

Satisfied with this, they abstained from dogmatizing and from all attempts to force on others their own peculiar views.

Their design did not look toward the building up of a large and populous colony, but rather to the preservation of “a pure and distinct congregation.” Had not the colony of Massachusetts Bay settled near them in a few years, it is probable that Plymouth would have seen a much larger influx of newcomers. As it was, the population at Plymouth remained small and almost entirely homogeneous, while the great stream of immigration was directed to the Bay.¹ Thus the occasions of discord were not many at Plymouth, nor were there frequent temptations to the exercise of severity; while there are several tokens that the men of Plymouth looked with disapproval upon some of the severer actions of their brethren to the north. They granted to Mrs. Hutchinson, banished from Massachusetts, leave to settle on Aquidneck (Rhode Island), then in the Plymouth patent, although they did not approve of her teachings any more than did the magistrates at Boston. They were kindly to Roger Williams; went far to a charitable construction of the motives of Maverick and Childs, and distinctly disapproved of the cruelties visited on the Quakers. Indeed, the liberality of Plymouth was so offensive to the rulers of Massachusetts, that at one time it threatened to break up the New England Confederacy. “However rigid the Plymouth colonists may have been at their first separation from the Church of England, they never discovered that persecuting spirit which we have seen in Massachusetts.”² To this liberality Bancroft suggests that their sojourn in Leyden may have led them.³ “Their residence in Holland had made them acquainted with various forms of Christianity; a wide experience had emancipated them from bigotry, and they were never betrayed into excesses of religious persecution.”

In the Colonial Records of Plymouth there is a conspicuous absence of legislation on matters of religion. The general court did not take order for the formation of Churches, or building of meeting houses, or the payment of ministers, or to compel attendance on divine services. In 1646 the general court resolved, “that something be done to mayntaine the libertys of the Churches, without intermeddling or wronging each other, according to the statute of England, that they may live in peace.” But it does not appear that anything further was done by the legislature. In 1651 Arthur Howland was presented by the grand jury “for not frequenting the public assemblage on the Lord’s Day.” But no trial is recorded, and no law under which the presentment was made.

At the time of the “Presbyterian Cabal” (1643), of which account will be given in the story of Massachusetts, and as a part of the conspiracy, a proposition was made in the general court¹ “for a full and free toleration of religion to all men, without exception against Turk, Jew, Papist, Socinian, Familist, or any other.” As it was afterward supposed to be discovered, there was a political plot concerned with this motion, but the members of the Plymouth legislature did not know it at the time, and were very favorably disposed to the proposition²

That there was a strong influence through general consent leading to uniformity and to evenly distributed support of religious services, seems clear, but there was no laying down of rigid lines and no compulsion by the magistrate.³ This is well illustrated by the reply of the Plymouth general court to the commissioners of Charles II. in 1665. The king had demanded liberty of religious privileges for “all men of competent

estates, knowledge, civil lives, and not scandalous.” To this the court replied, “We would not deny a liberty to any, that are truly conscientious, although differing from us, they maintaining an able preaching ministry for carrying on of public Sabbath worship; and withdraw not from paying their due proportion of maintenance to such ministers as are orderly settled in the places where they live, until they have one of their own, and that in such places as are capable of maintaining the worship of God in two distinct congregations.”¹

The liberal men of Plymouth were frequently criticised by them of Massachusetts for too great laxity in matters of the Church. Thus in 1656² the governor and magistrates of the latter colony addressed to the commissioners of the United Colonies a solemn protest against the ecclesiastical indifference of Plymouth: “Our neighbor colony of Plymouth, our beloved brethren, in a great part seem to be wanting to themselves in a due acknowledgment and encouragement to the ministry of the gospel.” This complaint they justified on the ground that the covenant of the United Colonies called them “not only to strengthen the hearts and hands each of other in appointing and maintaining of religion in its purity, but also to be assistant each to other, where any deficiency in such respects may appear.”

The commissioners, of course, had no legislative capacity and had to content themselves with some resolutions of an advisory nature to act with moral pressure on the delinquent colony. One of their resolutions enlarged on the necessity of “an able orthodox ministry. . . . to be duly sought out in every society or township within the several jurisdictions”; another dwelt upon the “competent maintenance (as) a debt of justice. . . . from the whole society jointly”; while a third left (per force) the matter “to the wisdom of the general court to draw up such conclusions and orders as may attain the end desired.” Then, as though it were an afterthought, the

commissioners resolved: “We do further propose to the general courts that all Quakers, Ranters, and other notorious heretics be prohibited coming into the United Colonies.”

In this last action was Massachusetts’ real objective. She was not content to submit to Plymouth’s disapproval of her own cruelty to the Quakers, and thought to coerce the Pilgrims into sympathy. But the appeal was futile. The men of Plymouth took no very severe steps toward the sectaries, and went on in their own way of charity and peace.¹ The most that they could be brought to do was to rebuke any civil disorders. in John Cotton’s Account it is stated that: “The Quakers much infested the country between the years 1650 and 1660, and proved very troublesome and subverted many. In the Church one family only was wholly led away. But Plymouth never made any sanguinary or capital laws against that sect.”²

In this charitable disposition they were following the counsel of their beloved pastor, Robinson. In Holland they unhesitatingly communed with the Dutch and French Churches, and also with the Scotch, under his guidance; and on their departure for America he urged upon them a like liberal spirit, saying to them in his tender farewell, “there will be no difference between unconformable ministers and you, when they come to the practice of the ordinances of the kingdom.”³

In “Hypocricie Unmasked,” a tract written against Gorton by Edward Winslow, who himself frequently “exercised” as a preacher,⁴ it is denied that the Pilgrims were ever unwilling

willing that Presbyterians should settle at Plymouth. Some Presbyterians had written thither from Scotland, to learn if they would be welcome “to freely exercise their Presbyterial government amongst us; and it was answered affirmatively, they might.”¹

As further illustrating the liberal spirit of Plymouth stands their action toward Charles Chauncy, who was afterward the president of Harvard College. He was called in 1638 as colleague to John Reyner, the pastor at Plymouth, and preached there for three years. He refused, however, to be installed or remain, because he was an immersionist. But “the Church, being loth to lose a man of such eminency, offered, in case he would settle, to suffer him to practice according to his persuasion. . . . . . provided he could peaceably suffer Mr. Reyner to baptize according to the mode in general use.”² This offer Mr. Chauncy did not accept.

The action of the Plymouth authorities against Lechford — or Lyford³ — though represented by the sufferer as for religious exclusiveness, was in reality for misdemeanor as a citizen. Thomas Lyford was an Episcopal minister, whose experiences at Plymouth may be briefly related as illustrating the spirit of the Pilgrims.⁴ He was sent over by the company in 1623, to take the place of Robinson, whom they were unwilling to send. Though such forcible supply of

their pastorate could not commend Lyford to the favor of the colonists, they received him amicably, provided for his support, and suffered him to teach. At the same time came John Oldham, one of a small number of emigrants, whom the company sent out under ill-defined peculiar relations to the body of settlers, and were thence called “particulars,” and who were disposed to arrogate to themselves special dignity. Lyford and Oldham from the very beginning of their stay at Plymouth entertained sentiments hostile to the colony and its government, and conspired together to work “a reformation both in Church and State.” To this end they wrote to the company in London malicious letters, abusing the colony and its magistrates, and gave voice to their feelings in the hearing of such of the colonists as they hoped to influence. The letters were intercepted by Bradford, and the men were soon brought to trial, the action being precipitated by riotous conduct on the part of Oldham. Presuming on his privilege as a “particular,” he refused to do military duty and made no small disturbance, when the officers undertook to compel him. “The Governor, hearing the tumulte, sent to quiet him, but he ramped more like a ferocious beast than a man, and called them all treatours and rebells and other such foule language as I am ashamed to remember, but after he was clapt up for a while he came to himself.”

On this the two men were arraigned, and the intercepted letters produced. Bradford upbraided them for their conduct, that they had been kindly received and entertained, but they had been ungrateful, acting “like the Hedgehogg, whom the conny in a stormy day in pittie received into her borrow, but would not be content to take part with her, but in the end with her sharp pricks forced the poore conny to forsake her own borrow: so these men with the like injustice indevored to doe ye same to those that entertained them.”

Oldham met the charges with barefaced denials and hardihood, but Lyford “burst into tears and confest, and feared he was reprobate.” Both were bidden to leave the colony within

six months, but Lyford appeared so penitent and humble that he “was allowed to teach again,” and some of the people were in favor of setting aside the sentence. Presently, however, he relapsed and was incontinently sent out of the colony. On arrival in England he possessed the ears of the company with sundry tales against the Plymouth people, which, with some asperity, they communicated to Bradford for explanation. One of the charges was that “there was diversitie about religion;” to which Bradford replied: “We knowe no shuch matter, for here was never any controversie or opposition, either publicke or private (to our knowledge).” Another charge was, “that the Church have none but themselves and separatists to live here”; to which the Governor answered: “They are willing and desirous y^t any honest man may live with them, that will carry himself peaceably, and seeke the comon good, or at least doe no harm.”¹

Somewhat later the company complained to Bradford for “receiving a man in their Church, who renounced all, universall, nationall, and diocessan Churches &c; by which it appears that though they deney the name of Brownists, yet they practiss the same &c; and therefore they should sin against God in building up such a people.” This is another of Lyford’s insinuations and seems to have been adopted by the company to justify their continued refusal to send Robin-son to Plymouth. They insist that he should submit to the “French discipline” of Churches, and finally say, “Mr. Robinson and his company may not go over to our plantation, unless he and they will reconcile themselves to our Church by a recantation under their hands.”

Meanwhile Lyford, in London, presses for justice and gets more than he wants: for on examination by a choice committee

he is proved to be of very loose morals, and is discarded. He did not return to Plymouth, but went to Virginia and there “died miserably.” His pamphlet, “Plaine Dealing,” published in London, 1641,¹ represents that he was persecuted at Plymouth as an Episcopalian, but the pamphlet abounds in so much malicious abuse of the people at Plymouth and the Bay, that the statement is not worthy of credence. He tells of a Mr. Doughty, a minister, who, in the gathering of a Church at Taunton, insisted that all children of baptized persons, according to the covenant of Abraham, were the children of Abraham, and so ought to be baptized. This was held to be a disturbance on his part, and the minister spoke to the magistrates to order him to be silent, “and the constable dragged him out;” and he and his family left the town. It does not appear, however, that the treatment of Doughty was due to any religious intolerance. It is quite possible, to-day, for disturbers of religious meetings to draw upon themselves the adverse action of the magistrate; and it is not at all unlikely that Doughty suffered, not as a religionist, but as a brawler.

Nor can we put much confidence in Thomas Morton’s account of Lyford’s afflictions. In his “New English Canaan” he says that Lyford’s banishment was due to his refusal to submit to the “brethren at Plymouth, who would have him renounce his former episcopal ordination, and receive a new calling from them, after their fantastical invention.” Morton’s pamphlet is a conscious travesty, full of ridicule of the colonists, and with many flashes of very amusing wit.²

Morton, indeed, had his own score to settle with both Plymouth and Massachusetts. He came over in 1622, as an agent for Gorges, and established himself at Merry Mount — in the present town of Quincy — and there led so easy and hilarious a life that he excited the pious horror of the Plymouth men. Bradford describes him as “setting up a schoole

of atheisme,” as given to drink and “Maypole follies.” He does not seem to have been disturbed, however, by the colonists, until he began teaching to the Indians the use of gunpowder and furnishing them with both guns and rum. This intensified the Plymouth horror into alarm, and in 1628 brought Myles Standish to Merry Mount to abate a dangerous nuisance. The settlement was broken up, and Morton was sent to England, only to return again in another year and presently draw down upon himself the repressive hand of the Bay authorities.¹

It is unjust to credit the actions against Lyford and Morton to the spirit of religious intolerance. Of such spirit we look in vain through the early records of Plymouth for distinctly severe tokens, save in the exclusion of Romanists and Jesuits from the jurisdiction. How largely this freedom from intolerance was due to the comparative isolation of Plymouth we cannot say; nor can we declare what the action of that colony might have been, had it been tried by so frequent and incisive dissent as disturbed the peace of Massachusetts. For the most part such disturbing elements did not go to Plymouth, where the peace and contentment, natural to so religious and so notably homogeneous a society, gave small occasion for any restrictive action.

Doubtless the colony owed much of this peace to the wise influence of Bradford. Succeeding as governor to John Carver, who fell a victim to the seventies of the first winter, and reelected year after year, he guided the fortunes of Plymouth with a discretion, moderation, and firmness, which reveal him as a man well qualified both in mind and character to be the leader of his fellows. He was a man to be trusted, followed, and loved. His Letter-Book and Narrative abound in illustrations of his wise vigor, and of a religious spirit which was simple as a child’s. Occasionally he “drops into poetry,” as witness the following from his “Poetical Account of New England“:

Happy was that lot of Plymouth, which, while permitting to them opportunity “to maintain God’s service” in the way most fitting to their mind and conscience, exposed them to so infrequent contact with differing views. By reason of such lot the historical incidents illustrative of our present theme are few in number. In Plymouth abode a spirit of broad tolerance, if not a legally defined religious liberty. It was again her good fortune that, when the king in 1691 merged the colony with Massachusetts, the union did not take place until the Bay theocracy had become little more than a name and memory.

Of quite different complexion was the early history of Massachusetts. While in Plymouth peace abounded, in the colony on the Bay discord did “much more abound.” Hardly had the colonists housed themselves and taken the first steps toward settling their modes of life and government, when the voice of religious dissension made itself heard, to be repressed by a severely persecuting hand and, in one instance, in the midst of a controversy which shook the very foundations of the commonwealth.

The history of the Bay settlement begins with the arrival of Endicott and his company in 1628. There were a few

scattered settlers before his coming: Thomas Walford at Charlestown, William Blackstone at Shawmut, Samuel Maverick on Noddle Island, and Morton’s companions at Merry Mount. These were all Churchmen and looked upon the new comers with small degree of favor. Blackstone was a minister and a recluse, desirous of a solitary life and somewhat of a dissenter. After the first settlement of affairs at the Bay, with the Congregational Church establishment and Shawmut occupied and renamed Boston, Blackstone felt himself crowded out. He retired from the scene, complaining that he left England because he “did not like the Lord Bishops,” and now he could not join with the colonists because he “would not be under the Lord Brethren.” These men, on Endicott’s arrival, showed considerable unwillingness to allow his settlement or to submit to his authority. But they were helpless and were persuaded to peace, from which conclusion Endicott gave the name of “Salem” to the place chosen for this advance guard of the new colony.

Like the Plymouth Pilgrims, Endicott and his company came in advance of a charter. They were hastened in their departure by the company in England, which had already made application for a charter, in order to anticipate the schemes of Gorges. The charter was granted by Charles I. in the following year, and conferred upon the “Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay in New England” a power of self-government, which the colony was not slow to use in maintaining a practical independence. In this charter, differing from all charters given to colonies out of New England, save that to Pennsylvania, there was nothing said about ecclesiastical affairs. It was not stated that churches should be founded “according to the laws of our kingdom of England.” Nor was there anything said about religious liberty, and “for a twofold reason: the crown would not have granted it, and it was not what the grantees wanted. They preferred to keep in their own hands the question as to how much, or how little, religious liberty they should claim or

allow.”¹ The charter did, indeed, contain a clause authorizing the colonial magistrate to administer the oath of supremacy “to all persons who should pass into their plantation.” But this was not required, being left to their discretion. It was also prescribed that the “Lawes and Ordinances (of the colony) be not contrarie or repugnant to the Lawes and Statutes of this our Realme of England.”²

It is evident that the Puritans of Massachusetts were jealous for their own freedom. They did not want the Church of England forced on them by the king, nor did they want religious liberty for any others than themselves. Whether this latter exclusiveness already lay in their mind when the charter was sought it is impossible to say, but, at once that their ecclesiastical regulations were formed, they appeared as sternly repressive of dissent as were the authorities of the English Church.

Their attitude toward the Church of England, as illustrated by the ecclesiastical polity immediately established at the Bay, marks a strange and almost unreasonable change of mind. Up to the time of the settlement in Massachusetts the distinction between the Puritans and those who were afterward called Pilgrims was sharply drawn. The latter were Separatists whose conscience led them to withdraw from the national Church, in protest against her oppression

and what they regarded as her corruptions. The Puritans, on the other hand, had never put themselves in such position, or withdrawn from the Church of England. Governor Hutchinson says of them:¹ “While they remained in England they continued in the communion of the Church. With some ceremonial parts all were more or less dissatisfied. The canons and rigid execution of them they accounted a grievous burden. The form of government in the Church was not a general subject of complaint, and they were very careful to distinguish themselves from the Brownists and other Separatists.” In the general, the Puritans approved the creed and polity of the Church of England and professed undying affection for her communion, only desiring to reform from within the Church certain errors of service and practice.

These are the sentiments expressed by them to the last day of their lives in England, and with the expression of this tender love for their “Mother Church” they bade farewell to English shores, to seek their new home across the sea. Of such feeling nothing can be more expressive than the words of Winthrop and his companions in their farewell, written just as their ship was about to sail: “Reverend Fathers and Brethren,” it says, “Howsoever your charitie may have met with discouragement through the misreport of our intentions or the indiscretions of some amongst us, yet we desire you would be pleased to take notice that the principals and body of our company esteem it our honour to call the Church of England, from whence wee rise, our deare mother, and cannot part from our native countrie, where she specially resideth, without much sadness of heart and many tears in our eyes; blessing God for the parentage and education, as members of the same body; and while we have breath we shall syncerely endeavor the continuance and abundance of her welfare.”

Men possessed of hostile feelings toward the Church could send no such tender and loving message. It is not too much to suppose that, at the time of their departure from England,

nothing was further from their minds than that attitude of separation from the Church of England immediately assumed on arrival in America.

The truth is, that the whole question of Church form was settled for them by their forerunner, Endicott, and so settled that, in spite of past affiliations and preferences, their wisest course was rather to acquiesce than to overturn. If it were their purpose, as their farewell words suggest, to maintain cordial and fraternal relations to the Church of England, then Endicott was the wrong man to lead their first band and lay the first course of the new commonwealth’s foundation. In him the sense of wrong in the Church had reached a deeper degree of dissent than in the most of the associates; while in character he was highly emotional, apt to give way to the strong impulse of the moment, sometimes in actions — like that of cutting the cross from the flag — which he soon found reason to regret. Withal, he was very devout, a man of rigid addiction to the sense of duty, and of a courage which no danger could alarm. Sent out by the company in advance as “a fit instrument to begin this wilderness work,” he used the power and opportunity thus in his hand to so mould the new Church that it should express the principles of non-conformity to the Church of England, no less clearly than the Separatists of Scrooby, Leyden, and Plymouth. Yet even in the mind of Endicott himself it would seem that the purpose of entire and hostile separation must have formed itself after he left English shores, if we are to credit him with the sincerity which is his due, in the words of his farewell:¹ “We will not say as the Separatists, ‘Farewell, Babylon! Farewell, Rome!’ But we say, ‘Farewell, dear England! Farewell, the Church of God in England!’”

It is but justice to suppose that the views of Endicott and his companions underwent some change during their long voyage, filled as it was with much religious counsel and exercise. With him came two ministers: Samuel Skelton,

“a friend to the utmost equality of privileges in Church and State,” and Francis Higginson, who had been deprived of his parish at Leicester for non-conformity. Through whatever motives they left England, the arrival of these men in their new home found them quite willing to commit themselves to a complete separation from the Church of England. It is possible also for them to have felt a practical unwisdom in making the order and discipline of their Church dependent on bishops three thousand miles away: a dependence which in after years furnished to the English establishments in America most exasperating and long-continued trouble.

Doubtless also the advice of Bradford had large influence with Endicott and his companions. It will be borne in mind that the Puritans of the Bay did not, as was the case with the Pilgrims, come to New England as an already organized Church. Members of the Church of England, they as individuals associated themselves for the purpose of a plantation in America. With very few exceptions, indeed, they were deeply religious men. Their aim in emigration was also chiefly religious. This aim is clearly expressed in the Conclusions, drawn up by the elder Winthrop and privately circulated in England. These stated that “former enterprises had aimed at profit: the present object is purity of religion; the earlier settlements had been filled with a lawless multitude; it is now proposed to form a peculiar government and to colonize the Best.”¹ The younger Winthrop, on receipt of the Conclusions, wrote to his father signifying his hearty approval of its statements and purpose, and his own readiness to join the new enterprise: “For myself,” he said, “I have seen so much of the vanity of the world, that I esteem no more the diversities of countries than of so many inns, whereof the traveller, that hath lodged in the best or in the worst, findeth no difference when he cometh to his journey’s end: and I shall call that my country, where I may most glorify God and enjoy the presence of my dearest friends.”²

A like testimony of religious aim is very strongly stated in “The Planters’ Plea: or the Grounds of Plantation Examined: a Manifestation of the Causes moving such as have undertaken a Plantation in New England.” This is the title of a pamphlet published in London, 1630.¹ The heading of Chapter V. runs, “That New England is a fit country for the seating of a Colonie for the propagation of Religion.” The country is not rich and so is better for the religious purpose. “If men desire people to degenerate speedily, and to corrupt their minds and bodies too, and besides to tole in theeves and spoilers from abroad, let them seek a rich soil, which brings in much with little labor: but if they desire that Piety and godliness shall prosper accompanied with sobriety, justice, and love, let them choose a Country such as this is — which may yield sufficiency with hard labor and industry.”

To our historical sense it would seem that inspiration itself could not have more clearly outlined one of the prime conditions of New England’s future greatness.²

Another and quaint description of the motive of colonization is contained in Scottow’s “Narrative of the Planting of Massachusetts.”³ It was published at Boston in 1694, and rivals productions of a hundred years before in its extravagant language. “Neither Gold or Silver, nor French or Dutch Trade of Peltry did Oil their Wheels; it was the Propagation of Piety and Religion to Posterity; and the secret Macedonian Call, COME OVER AND HELP US — the setting up

of Christ’s Kingdom among the Heathens. . . . Infinite Wisdom and Prudence contrived and directed this Mysterious Work of Providence: Divine Courage and Resolution managed it; Superhumane Sedulity and Diligence attended it, and Angelical Swiftness and Dispatch finished it. Its Wheels stirred not but according to the HOLY SPIRITS motion in them.”

The religious aim is very clearly stated in the company’s instructions to Endicott, April, 1629: “The propagation of the Gospel we do profess above all to be our aim: we have been careful to have a plentiful provision of godly ministers: we trust that, not only those of our own nation will be built up in the knowledge of God, but also that the Indians will be reduced to the obedience of God and Christ.”¹

But the company made no suggestions as to the form which the Church should take in the colony. They provided for the support of the ministers, and that “convenient Churches” should be built, one-half of the expense of which should be borne by the company, and the other half by the planters. Yet, strangely enough, as to Church polity they left the colonists free to choose for themselves. It was competent for the planters to adopt Independency, Presbytery, or Episcopacy, with or without dependence on the Church of

England. The only phrase of the instructions which could imply a thought of this matter is their language about the ministers: “For the manner of exercising their ministry, we leave that to themselves, hoping they will make God’s word the rule of their actions.”¹

With this freedom of action it was suggested that counsel might well be sought at Plymouth. Dr. Samuel Fuller wrote from Boston to Bradford in 1630: “Here is a gentleman, one Mr. Cottington, who told me that Mr. Cotton’s advice at Hampton was, that they should take advice of them at Plymouth and should do nothing to offend them.”² Upon this advice Endicott acted, when, shortly after landing, the scurvy broke out in the company. He sent to Bradford for medical help, and the issue shows that by the same means he obtained help toward a Church foundation. He wrote to Bradford:³ “God’s People are marked with one and the same mark, and sealed with one and the same seal, and have for the main one and the same heart, guided by one and the same Spirit of truth, and where this is there can be no discord — nay, there must needs be sweet harmony: and the same request (with you) I make unto the Lord, that we may as Christian Brethren be united by an heavenly and unfeigned love.”

To the application thus lovingly made Bradford responded by sending Dr. Fuller to Salem as a competent adviser in the two matters in hand of healing the sick and organizing a Church. It is safe to suppose that this angel of the Church at Plymouth acquainted the Salem brethren with the distinctive principles and teachings of the beloved Robinson, as illustrated in the Church of the Pilgrims. According to this teaching “a company of faithful people in the covenant of God is a Church, though without any officers; and this Church has an interest in all the holy things of God within itself, without any foreign assistance.⁴

The advice given by Fuller seemed so sound that Endicott wrote to Bradford: “I rejoice that I am by him satisfied, touching your form of outward worship; “and on this pattern he and the godly of Salem proceeded to “form themselves into a Church state.” Two fundamentals were at once laid down. The one was that the Church of Salem, though grateful for the advice received, should not “acknowledge any ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the Church of Plymouth.” The other was that the “power of ordination should not exist in the clergy, but should depend entirely upon the free election of the Church.”¹

Thereupon the people of Salem proceeded to organize their Church, first adopting a Confession of Faith and a Covenant; and then, after a day of humiliation, choosing and ordaining their pastor and teacher; the two clergymen of the company having declared their readiness to renounce the episcopal ordination received by them in England. Of this proceeding Mr. Charles Gott wrote to Bradford;² first describing the consensus of opinion, that a minister must have two calls; the inward by the Spirit of God and the outward by the people; and then recounting the election, which was by ballot. “The most voice,” he wrote, “was for Mr. Skelton to be pastor and Mr. Higginson to be teacher; and Mr. Higginson with three or four men of the gravest members of the Church laid their hands on Mr. Skelton, using prayer therewith: this

being done, there was imposition of hands on Mr. Higginson. . . . Now good Sir, I hope that you and the rest of God’s people (who are acquainted with the ways of God) with you will say that here was a right foundation laid, and that these two blessed servants of the Lord came in at the door, and not at the window.” Whereon comments Bradford in his History, “Now came these people and quickly grew into Church order, and set themselves roundly to walk in all the ways of God.”¹

Thus was constituted the first Puritan Church in New England, approaching very closely in character to the Church of the Pilgrims. But the men of Salem could not break away from all bonds or concede freedom of conscience to the individual. “Because they foresaw this wilderness might be looked on as a place of liberty, and, therefore, might in time be troubled with erroneous spirits, therefore they did put in one article into the confession of faith on purpose, about the duty and power of the magistrate in matters of religion.”² “This,” says Judge Story, writing on the settlement of Salem, “was their fundamental error, — the necessity of a union between Church and State. To this they clung as to an ark of safety.”³ As we look at the matter, over so long a time and through so many lessons of experience, it is easy to detect this error, which became the fruitful source of so many woes in the young commonwealth. But to most men of that time legal exclusion of error, and even of “diversitie,” was a prime condition of security. “it is by a mutual consent, through a special overruling Providence to seek out a place of cohabitation and consortship, under a due form of government both civil and ecclesiastical.”⁴ So wrote Winthrop on shipboard, describing the purpose of the Puritan emigration in his “Model of Christian Charity” — a name

which seems very much of a misnomer; for this expressed purpose, as illustrated in the immediately subsequent history, was quite distinct from that sufferance of opposing opinion, which a true Christian charity demands. Hutchinson expresses the purpose in clearer and more definite terms: “To obtain for themselves and their posterity the liberty of worshipping God in such manner as appeared to them to be most agreeable to the Sacred Scriptures.”¹

Immediately that this principle, denying all diversity and subjecting religious matters to the magistrate, was made a fundamental, the authorities found occasion to apply it. For the people were not altogether unanimous in the action. There was some dissent. How many were of that mind we are not told, but the party had very respectable leading in John and Samuel Browne. These brothers were among the substantial promoters of the plantation, entitled to respect and possessed of influence. Though decidedly Puritan, they still regarded the English Church and liturgy with affection, and were not willing to follow this abandonment of all her service. So with such as sympathized in this feeling they instituted a service of their own, using the book of common prayer and endeavoring to assert the continuance of their union with that “dear mother” in England.

But such liberty was not to be allowed.² To the mind of Endicott any dissent from the established order was a dangerous faction, to be put down with a strong hand. So he adopted an instant and imperious course, and, acting on his own authority alone, caused the Brownes to be put on a ship and returned to England. Thus early in the history do we find example of the then common inability of men to understand that liberty was a good thing for any others than themselves.

Endicott was deeply outraged by the law of conformity in England, but he found no objection to apply it in America. The sole criterion of its right or wrong was in the question as to who should suffer by it. When the power lay in his own hand he had no objection to range himself with the hated Laud.

The Brownes, thus summarily banished from New England, took home with them a deep sense of wrong, to which on arrival they gave voice in complaint. But, while they succeeded in creating much unfavorable comment about the new settlers, they did not obtain from the company a redress of their wrongs. The company, indeed, while avoiding specific reference to their case, if indeed it had by that tunic reached them, yet in their Instructions of 1629 already quoted, use language which goes far to justify Endicott’s action.¹ “If fair means do not avail (against disorderly persons) we pray you to deal as in your discretions you shall think fittest.” They apologize for sending over Ralph Smith (who afterward went to Plymouth), who, they say, desired and obtained passage “before we knew of his difference in judgment in some things from our minister’s.” Again, “It is often found that some busy persons, led more by their will than by any good warrant out of God’s word, take opportunity by moving needless questions, to stir up strife. . . from which small beginnings great mischiefs have followed: we pray you, if any such disputes shall happen among you, that you suppress them.”

One curious sequent to this affair of the Brownes is preserved in a letter from Dudley to the Countess of Lincoln,² written in December of 1630. He desired to defend the settlers at the Bay from the charge of the Brownes that they “were Brownists in religion and ill affected to our State at home;” and says, “I know no one person, who came over with us, the last year, to be altered in judgment or affection, either

in ecclesiastical or civil respects.” It is difficult to conceive how Dudley could have so written without a conscious perversion of the truth. There is documentary proof that, either these men grossly dissembled in their tender farewell to England and her Church, or else were radically “altered in judgment (and) affection in ecclesiastical affairs,” on their arrival in the plantation. As to the term “Brownists,” it is a dispute about a word, which was offensive to the Pilgrims themselves. But it is clear that, if the Pilgrims were Brownists, such also had the Puritans become in Massachusetts. They were Separatists from the Church of England as positively as the men of Scrooby, and differed only from the Pilgrims in that, having now the power, they merged Church and State together and suffered no dissent from their own opinions in matters of religious worship.

A more pleasing product of the time is preserved in Higginson’s¹ “NEW ENGLAND’S PLANTATION, or, a Short and True Description of the Commodities and Discommodities of the Country. Written by a rev. Divine now there resident. Printed, London, 1630.” This is a pamphlet and concludes: “But that which is our greatest comfort and meanes of defence above all others, is that we have here the true Religion and holy Ordinances of Almighty God taught amongst us.

Thanks be to God! We have plentie of Preaching and diligent
Catechizing with strict and careful exercise and good
and commendable orders, to bring our People into
a Christian conversation, with whom we have
to do withal. And thus we doubt not
but God will be with us, and, if
God be with us, who can
be against us?”

Early in 1630 the larger company of Puritans, for whom Endicott had prepared the way, disembarked in Massachusetts. They brought with them the charter which enabled them to

mould and establish a government of their own, without reference to a company in London or to king and parliament. So early was laid the foundation of American Independence.

Prominent in this company of seven hundred were John Winthrop, Thomas Dudley, and Sir Richard Saltonstall, the last of whom — unhappily for the colony, as we may think, because of his kind and liberal spirit — returned to England after a short sojourn in Massachusetts. Of these three Winthrop was easily the chief, a man who has had few equals in the history of America. A contemporary,¹ in language of enthusiasm, describes him as having “a more than ordinary measure of those Qualities which adorn an officer of human Society: “His Justice was impartial; His Wisdom excellently tempered Things according to the Art of Governing: His Courage made Him dare to do right; All which Vertues he rendered. the more illustrious by emblazoning them with the constant Liberality and Hospitality of a Gentleman. This made him the Terror of the Wicked, the Delight of the Sober, and the Hope of those who had any hopeful Design in Hand for the Good of the Nation and the interests of Religion. Accordingly, when the noble Design of carrying a Colony of chosen People into an American Wilderness was by some eminent persons undertaken, this Eminent Person was by the Consent of all chosen for the Moses who must be the Leader of so Great an Undertaking.” In far simpler phrase Dr. Fuller, who was at the Bay when Winthrop arrived, wrote to Bradford, “The Governour is a godly, wise, and humble gentleman, and very discreet and of a very fine temper.”²

Winthrop was in his forty-fourth year, in the full vigor of life and full maturity of a character, which all the years before had deepened, broadened, and sweetened. A devoted son of the Church of England, he never associated himself with dissenters until his coming to this country, but at the

same time was markedly Puritan in regard to existing errors. His diary reveals a nature remarkably sensitive to religious influence. While but a lad he wrote in it:¹ “I desire to make it one of my chiefe petitions to have that grace to be poore in spirit: I will ever walk humbly before my God, and meekly, mildly, and gently towards all men; so shall have peace. . . . I doe resolve first to give myselfe, my life, my witt, my healthe, my wealthe to the service of my God and Saviour, who by givinge himselfe for me & to me deserves whatsoever I am or can be, to be at his Commandement and for his glorye.” With this as a keynote to his life, he was making continual advances into the realms of spiritual experience. Of such the diary abounds in tokens, displaying faith and love in constant and increasing exercise; while in no line appears, after the fashion of religionists of his day, any censorious judgment of those who differed from him. As a man of affairs, both in business and public office, he had given evidence of marked judgment and ability, so that “both in character and capacity he was one to inspire peculiar confidence.”

Because of such character he was solicited by the company in England, himself not one of the original members, to join their adventure not only, but to accept the governorship in America. This he took under advisement, and wrote, May, 1629: “My deare wife, I am veryly persuaded God will bringe some heavye Affliction upon this lande, and that speedylye. . . . If the Lord seeth it will be good for us, He will provide a shelter and a hidinge place for us & others, as a Zoar for Lot.”² Then he proceeds, after a conscientious manner of consideration peculiar to himself, to set down “Reasons for the Plantation in New England”;³ and among them these: “What can be better worke and more honorable and worthy of a Christian than to helpe raise and supporte a particular Church, while it is in its infancy, It appears to be a worke of God for the good of his Church, in that he hath disposed the heartes of soe many of his wise and faithful servants,

both ministers and others, not only to approve, but to interest themselves in it.” With such thought in his mind, it was urged upon him by his associates that he must both go and assume command and presently he set down “Particular Considerations in the ease of John Winthrop,”¹ writing of himself in the third person: “1. It is come to that issue as (in all probability) the welfare of the Plantation dependes upon his goeinge, for divers of the Chiefe Undertakers (upon whom the rest depends) will not go without him. 2. He acknowledges a satisfactory callinge. 3. . . . If he should refuse this opportunity, the talent which God hath bestowed upon him for publicke service were like to be buried.”

This is an interesting process through which the strong, devout, and loving man came to the conviction that the call to him from God was clear. It accounts for much in his after life of devotion and patience.

We are not, then, surprised to see him on the Arbella westward bound, and to hear him discourse to his companions in words of rare eloquence and tenderness:² Thus stands the case between God and us. We are entered into a covenant with Him for this work. We have taken out a commission. . . The only way to avoid shipwreck, is to follow the counsel of 1 Micah, ‘to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly before God.’ For this end we must be knit together in this work as one man. . . . We must hold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience, and liberality. We must delight in each other; make other’s condition our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in this work, as members of the same body.” There is abundant evidence in the after story that Winthrop faithfully exhibited in his own life the principles thus urged upon his brethren. He was far from sympathizing in

the intolerance of his companions and joined in its decrees, when so compelled, under the protest of his heart. During the nineteen years of his life in New England he was twelve times chosen governor, and one of the two charges brought against his administration was, that he “had dealt too remissly in point of justice in one or two passages. . . and failed in over much lenity.”¹

This charge was brought before the deputies by Dudley, to whom Winthrop replied that, “in the infancy of plantations justice should be administered with more lenity than in a settled state.” The leading magistrates and ministers differed from him, and Winthrop professed himself convinced.²

They were a hard-headed and determined set of men, with whom Winthrop had to deal, unwilling to submit to anything which looked like dictation, even from the all powerful ministers. Of this two notable expressions are found in respect to Winthrop’s occupation of office. In 1634, Winthrop being governor at the time, John Cotton preached the election sermon and argued against rotation in office, whereupon the deputies at once put Dudley in Winthrop’s chair. Again, in 1643, Winthrop being governor again, Ezekiel Rogers preached the election sermon and argued against the reelection of an incumbent, on the ground that it would tend

toward the creation of a life office. To this the deputies responded by immediately reelecting Winthrop!¹

Another incident may well be noted, for the sake of the utterance which it brought from Winthrop’s lips. In 1643 he was accused of having exceeded his authority in the matter of a trumpery dispute at Hingham, as to who should be captain of a militia company. Solemn impeachment of the governor was based thereon, and Winthrop, refusing to sit among the magistrates until he was acquitted, made his own defence, with the result of a most honorable dismissal of the charge. In the course of his speech he phrased as fine a definition of Civil Liberty as ever has been made:

“This liberty is the proper end and object of authority, and cannot subsist without it; and it is a liberty to that only which is good, just, and honest. . . . This liberty you are to stand for with the hazard (not only of your goods, but) of your lives, if need be. . . . This liberty is maintained and exercised in a way of subjection to authority; it is the same kind of liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free.”²

How much the exclusiveness of the Bay went against the grain with Winthrop is suggested by his refusal to sign an order for banishment of “a heretic.” This was brought to him by Dudley, in Winthrop’s last illness. He declined, saying, “I have done too much of that work already.” How he was regarded by the people, among whom he lived and whom he served, is well shown in Cotton’s sermon on his death: “A governor who has been unto us a brother; not usurping authority over the Church; often speaking his advice and often contradicted, even by young men and some of low degree; yet not replying, but offering satisfaction also when any supposed offences have arisen: a governor who has been unto us a mother, parent-like distributing his goods to brethren and neighbors, and gently bearing our infirmities without taking notice of them.”³

To this judgment of contemporaries may be fitly added that of posterity. Thus writes Doyle: “Every page in the early history of New England bears witness to the patience, the firmness, the far-seeing wisdom of Winthrop. But to estimate these qualities as they deserve, we must not forget what the men were with whom, and in some measure by whom, he worked. To guard the Commonwealth against the attacks of courtiers, churchmen, and speculators was no small task. But it was an even greater achievement to keep impracticable fanatics, like Dudley and Endicott, within the bounds of reason, and to use for the benefit of the state those headstrong passions which at every turn threatened to rend it asunder.”¹ The attentive student of Winthrop and his time can hardly fail of assent to the calm encomium of Young: “In his magnanimity, disinterestedness, and moderation; in his mingled firmness of principle and mildness of temper; in his harmonious character, consistent life, and well-balanced mind, the Father of Massachusetts reminds us of the great Father of his Country, and is the only man in our history worthy to stand as a parallel to Washington.”²

There is no need of apology for so long excursion in description of Winthrop, for it is well to remind ourselves of a somewhat forgotten greatness. Nor would the picture be complete without some notes of his close associate, Dudley. In nearly all respects where Winthrop was broad, patient, wise, and loving, Dudley was his opposite. Irritable, intolerant, narrow-minded, and censorious toward all who differed from him, Dudley stands in the history as a constant foil by which the nobler qualities of Winthrop appear the more illustrious. Jealous of Winthrop’s position and influence and impatient of his milder spirit, he was ever on the watch to discover faults where they did not exist, and to impede any efforts of Winthrop’s liberal spirit. Human kindness

was left out of his nature, and charity failed to express herself in his religious character. He was equal to approaching the death-bed of his Chief to solicit complicity in an act of spiritual tyranny. In his pocket, after his own death, was found the famous quatrain, supposed to be his own composition: —

It is impossible for men of our day to find anything lovable in the character of Dudley, though we cannot fail to respect in him a conscientious tenacity of what he regarded as duty, and a courage insensible of fear. Winthrop describes him as “a man of approved wisdom and godliness, and of much good service to the country.”

Such, then, were the two leading spirits in that company, which in the spring of 1630 landed at Salem to reënforce the band of Endicott; and with their charter in their hands to found an independent, self-governing commonwealth. As before noted, in one respect, and that which specially concerns this narrative, they found the work already done and awaiting their acceptance. The first Church of Massachusetts had been organized, and with it the ecclesiastical polity of the new state established.

To this establishment the new comers not only seem to have made no objection, but rather by immediate concurrence signified their hearty approval.¹ Though not patterned after any prearranged plan and instructions of their own, they recognized in Endicott’s work a form of united civil and ecclesiastical government which they were glad to adopt. Confessedly, having left England for the sake of religion, what better scheme could be devised to effect their desire?

We owe to John Cotton the explicit terms in which that governing desire is acknowledged. At the request of the General Court he drew up an “Abstract of Laws” for the guidance of magistrates, which he patterned after “the laws of judgement delivered from God to Moses.”¹ This abstract he accompanied with an argument of advice, “that Theocracy, i.e. God’s government, might be established as the best form of government, wherein the people that choose rulers are God’s people in covenant with Him, that is, members of the Churches.” Afterward Cotton, writing to Lord Say and Sele, describes the Government of Massachusetts as “a Theocracy in both, the best form of government in the Commonwealth, as well as in the Church.”²

In so expressing himself Cotton was but putting in a phrase of definition the formative principle which had already controlled the colonial legislation. The earliest legislative body in the Bay was the court of assistants, under Endicott as governor; and at their initial meeting the first question considered was, “How the ministers shall be mayntained?” This was at once answered by ordering that houses should be built for them, and competent provision be made in supplies and money “at the publicke expense.”³ Three months afterward the court ordered a tax to raise £60 for this purpose. Afterward there are many acts of the legislature having reference to such provision. Thus, in 1637, the people of Newberry having proved remiss, the general court ordered the selectmen to levy a tax for the minister’s support; and in 1638 enacted a general law that “all inhabitants are lyable to assessment for Church as for State,” the tax to be collected by distraint, if necessary. At the very beginning of the government there was by such action imbedded in the constitution one essential feature of an established Church, Church-rates to be levied and collected by the civil officer. There it remained a part of Massachusetts

law for two hundred years, not giving way until long after the political independence of the United States was effected.¹

An early instance of opposition is related by Hutchinson. One Briscue, a tanner of Watertown, published in 1644 a pamphlet against the Church tax, arguing that such method of supporting religion was immoral and contrary to justice, and that ministers accepting moneys so raised, disgraced themselves and the cause of religion. For this publication he was summoned before the general court and gravely admonished.

It is worth while to notice, in passing, that this first court of assistants emphasized their care for religion in another way. At the first meeting, having disposed of ministerial support, they cited Morton of Mount Wollaston or Merry Mount — to answer for his “godless” conduct, and at their next session ordered that he be sent to England, his goods confiscated to pay costs, and his house burned. Presently thereafter they ordered “all cards and dice to be made away with.” Their settlement was distinctly religious, and whatsoever legislation was deemed needful to sustain religion and keep the people in religious ways the authorities scrupled not to enact out of any consideration of personal liberty.

The next step in the establishment of a State-Church was taken by the first general court, which met on May 18, 1631. At this session applications to be “admitted Freemen” “were made by one hundred and ten persons. The applicants were admitted, on taking the oath of allegiance; but the court, as though alarmed by so large an influx of citizens and fearing the consequences of too wide entrance to the franchise, immediately

took the following action, the importance of which as defining the colonial aim cannot be exaggerated. The act is in these words: “To the end the body of the commons may be preserved of honest and good men, it is ordered and agreed, that, for the time to come, noe man shall be admitted to the freedome of this body polliticke, but such as are members of some of the Churches within the lymitts of the same.”

This restriction of the franchise went further than the intent recited in the act, “to preserve the body of the commons of honest and good men.” It went further than the requirement of religious character, or profession, on the part of electors, and confined the suffrage to members of a particular Church approved and supported by the state. There were “honest and good men” in the colony who were not members in that Church, and could not vote. This class so increased in number that at the time, 1665, when the restriction was somewhat relaxed, it was estimated that they outnumbered the freemen in the ratio of five to one.

Nor could the condition of freemen be obtained by the most positive evidences of Christian character. Neither Episcopalian, nor Presbyterian, nor Baptist, of howsoever exalted spiritual standing, could be a freeman. The only legal evidence that even a saint had honesty and goodness enough to fit him for the sacred duty of voting for a constable was the certificate of some minister that he was a member of a Congregational Church “in good and regular standing.” This is precisely the ground occupied by the parliament of England in its acts of uniformity, debarring from all civil privileges and office every man not a member of the Anglican Church, and from the oppression of which these Puritans had come across the sea. The only difference was that parliament established Episcopacy, while the general court of Massachusetts established Congregationalism.¹

The reasons of such action by the fathers of Massachusetts are not far to seek. They came into the wilderness to establish for themselves a religious commonwealth, in which both State and Church should be patterned after their own mind, and into which they desired that none should come, who were not in thorough sympathy with themselves on these cardinal points. They made little of what in modern phrase is called the “solidarity of humanity.” Their asylum was not founded as a refuge for all the oppressed. The world was wide. There was yet ample room in America: let those who were not of them keep away from them. “I do take upon me,” says the “Simple Cobler of Aggawam,” in words already quoted, — “to be the Herald of New England, so far as to proclaim to the world in the name of the Colony, that all Familists, Antinomians, Anabaptists, and other Enthusiasts shall have free Liberty to keep away from us, and such as will come to be gone as fast as they can, the sooner the better.”¹

There has been made no better defence of this policy of restriction shown, not only in the law of franchise, but also in the laws touching the chronicle of strangers, than is found in the “Considerations,” of Winthrop, of which the following are specially in point: — “1. If the place of our cohabitation be our own, then no man hath a right to come unto us, &c., without our consent. “2. If no man hath a right to our land, government privileges, &c., but by our consent, then it is reason that we should take notice of (them) before we confer any such upon them.

“3. If we are bound to keep off whatsoever appears to tend to our ruin or damage, then may we lawfully refuse to receive such whose dispositions suit not with ours, and whose society (we know) will be hurtful to us, . . . “7. A family is a little commonwealth and a commonwealth a great family. Now as a family is not bound to receive all comers, no more is a commonwealth. “8. It is worse to receive a man, whom we must cast out again, than to deny him admission.”¹

One other step remained to make the establishment complete. This was the giving to the magistrates power over the Churches themselves, and it was accomplished by an act of the general court in 1635. Already it would seem that irregularities had occurred in. the matter of organizing Churches, and the court proceeded to ordain a uniformity and prevent all diversities in ecclesiastical polity. The act recites:² “This Court doeth not, nor will hereafter, approve of any such companyes of men as shall henceforthe ioyne in any pretended way of Church fellowship, without they shall first acquaint the magistrates and the elders of the greater part of the Churches in this jurisdiction with their intentions, and have their approbation herein: and noe person, being a member of any Church which shall hereafter be gathered without the approbation of the magistrates and the greater part of the Churches, shall be admitted to the ffreedome of this commonwealthe.”

This effectually put into the hands of the civil power authority over the Church, an authority not only controlling questions of organization and polity, but assuming inquisitorial power. Indeed, before this act the general court had not hesitated to inquire into the affairs of the local Churches. Prince relates³ that one Richard Browne of Watertown had

said, that “the Church of Rome was a true Church, basing his opinion on the fact that the Reformed Churches did not re-baptize those who came over from Rome.” The Church at Watertown had just chosen Browne for an elder, and the general court notified the Church that “he was not a proper for such office.” This took place in 1631. In like exercise of power the court, as will presently be noted, rebuked the Salem Church for calling Roger Williams to the pastorate, compelling the Church to dismiss Williams and to apologize for its conduct.¹

The court also took upon itself to scrutinize any persons attempting to preach, forbidding all unauthorized persons, and also forbidding any one to preach before an unauthorized society. In 1650 a Mr. Matthews, for preaching to an unauthorized Church, was fined £10.² Such actions were based upon the principle formally adopted by the general court (1641) that “The civil authority. . . hath power and liberty to see the peace, ordinances, and rules of Christ observed in every Church, according to His word. . . . It is the duty of the Christian magistrate to take care that the people be fed with wholesome and. sound doctrine” (1658)³ Again in 1660, the following was enacted: “It being the great duty of this court (to see) that all places and people within our gates be supplied b an able and faithful ministry of God’s holy word the president of each county court shall duly, from time to time, give it in charge to the grand juries to present all abuses and neglects of this kind.” Eight years later, the court declared: “The Christian magistrate is bound by the word of God to preserve the peace, order, and liberty of the Churches of Christ, and by all due means to promote religion in doctrine and discipline.”⁴

The Massachusetts establishment differed from the State Church in England and in other colonies in that the law

conferred no right of presentation, save under special circumstances. The choice of minister was left to the people; but the law of 1692¹ provided that the county court should “take care that no town is destitute of a minister.” In case of any such vacancy, the court should notify the Church to choose; and, if the Church neglected to do so, the court should procure and settle a minister and levy on the town for his support.

Another great contrast is to be noted in the source of the establishment. In England the crown and parliament, without any consultation with the people, built up the fabric of the Anglican Church. The Church was imposed upon the nation by the monarch. A similar fact exists in the history of those colonies in which the Church of England was established. That Church came into possession by a royal rescript, a clause of the charter, or of instructions from the crown or the board of trade. It was imposed on those colonies without any consideration as to whether the inhabitants were in sympathy with it — a royal demand that what religious polity should obtain among them should be that which the king approved. It is true that the house of burgesses in Virginia did by formal act establish the Church of England as the State-Church of the colony, but in so doing they were in effect only recognizing and confirming that which a dozen years before had been ordered by the crown. This determination by the home government, it is also to be observed, was in most instances against the desire of the colonies and the religious preferences of the people. This was eminently the fact in Maryland from the beginning, and afterward became so in Virginia, while not more than one in twenty of the people of New York approved the futile efforts of Cornbury to establish the Church of England in that province.

The contrast presented in Massachusetts is marked. There was studious avoidance of any religious establishment in the

charter, and the crown attempted no dictation on the subject of the Church. But immediately that the planters were settled they supplied the lack for themselves, building up a State-Church on as rigid lines and as sharp requirements of uniformity as those which intrenched the Anglican Church in the English constitution. This was the expression of the popular will of early Massachusetts. The fact cannot receive too great an emphasis. What the people of that day wanted they established. The hardships of the after condition arose, not from any dictation of external authority, but from the incoming of persons who were not of the same mind, and from the growth of population out of sympathy with the purposes and measures of their fathers.

Under the earlier conditions which the more rigid of the second and third generation strove to maintain, there was much legislation, both to support the Church as an establishment, and to conserve the religious character of the community. Thus, very early, the law of domicile guarded against strangers and required all people to live within easy distance of the meeting-house, so that all could attend worship.¹ In 1640 the Act against Heresy ordained that any person denying the immortality of the soul, or the resurrection, or sin in the regenerate, or the need of repentance, or the redemption by Christ, or justification through Christ, or the morality of the fourth commandment or the baptism of infants, or “who shall purposely depart the congregation at the administration of that ordinance,”² or shall endeavor to seduce others to any of these heresies, should be banished. In the same year, contemptuous conduct toward the word or preacher was made punishable; for the first offence, by a public reproof from the magistrate and bonds for good behavior; for the second offence, by five shillings fine, or by

“standing on a block four feet high,” having on the breast a placard with the words,

“An Open and Obstinate Contemner of God’s Holy Ordinances”¹

One can hardly fail of noting the wide divergence between this law and its Preamble. The statute begins, “Although no human power be lord over the conscience, yet because such as bring in damnable heresies. . . ought duly to be restrained.” Evidently, in the Puritan view there was a human lordship of every conscience save their own! They demanded for themselves a power which they denied to all other men.

By the same law non-attendance on divine service was punished by a fine of five shillings. In 1656 it was enacted that any person denying any of the books of the Bible should be whipped or fined, and, if obstinate, banished. The Law of 1697 against “Blasphemy and Atheism” is remarkable both for the ingenuity of its penalties, and as an indication that only a sense of waning religious power in the magistrate could so express itself. In the act, which finds both atheism and blasphemy in “denying the true God,” various penalties are awarded; surety for good behavior, imprisonment for six months, the pillory, whipping, boring the tongue with a hot iron, and sitting on the gallows with a rope about the neck, at the discretion of the court; provided that not more than two of such penalties be inflicted for one and the same offence.

Of course, under the general law Roman Catholics were not suffered to live in the colony. In 1647 Jesuits were forbidden to enter the colony. If any should come, they were at once to be banished; if they returned, to be put to death.

We find another illustration of the religious and “orthodox” intent in the “Articles of Confederation,” which (1643) bound together the colonies of Massachusetts, Plymouth,

Connecticut, and New Haven in the “New England Confederacy.” The preamble recites: “Whereas we all came into these parts of America with one and the same end and aim, viz.; to advance the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ and to enjoy the liberty of the Gospel in purity and peace;” and declares as one of the objects of the union, “preserving and propagating the truth and liberties of the gospel.” It was defined that only Church members could be commissioners to the federal council. The immediately practical aim of the union was mutual aid in defence against the Indians, but the colonists could not take measures for such a purpose save in the name of religion. Uniformity also, or at least regularity, seems to have been no less of a requirement; for when Rhode Island applied for admission into the confederacy it was refused, because “they ran a different course both in their ministry and in their civil administration.”¹

Thus the religious quality of early Massachusetts was with its State-Church very prominent and emphatic. It more than justified Dudley’s language in his letter to the Countess of Lincoln: “If any come hether to plant for worldly ends, that canne live well at home, hee comits an errour of which hee will soon repent him. But if for spirituall, and that noe particular obstacle hinder his removeall, he may find here what may well content him.”²

It were impossible that in a community so constituted the ministry should fail of acquiring an immense influence. They did not as such, after the fashion of the “spiritual lords” in parliament, occupy seats in the legislature, but their power was very great and very general. Their advice on all matters of importance, and on many of trivial nature, was sought by the magistrates. Without exception they were men of education and sincere godliness, without fear in the ways of conscience, as ready to suffer as to speak. But for the most

part they were intensely narrow, unable to conceive that truth could lodge outside of their own lines, and as bigoted and harsh as were the spiritual lords from whose tyranny themselves had fled. Among his censorious brethren the charity of the gentle Shepherd shows

Morton in his Memorial¹ gives a curious illustration of the feeling common among the ministry. When Wilson, the pastor at Boston, was dying, he was asked what were the special sins which provoked the displeasure of God against the country. He replied that the chief were Separation, Anabaptism, and Korahism, defining the last as a rising-up of the people against their ministers and elders, as though they took too much upon them. Wilson died in 1667, when the power of the ministers had begun to be impaired.

It needs to be noted, however, that, while the official dignity and authority of the ministers were very great, there was nothing therein of a priestly quality. It was solely because of character and ability that they were put into their sacred office. Every man of them had to be able to render a reason other than the sacred character of his office, or lose both place and respect. The functions of their office, with all its power and privilege, were rigidly conditioned on personal character and ability.² The Abstract of Laws drawn up by Cotton was never adopted by the general court, and all law was within the discretion of the magistrate. In 1641 a code was compiled by Rev. Nathaniel Ward, author of the “Simple Cobler of Aggawam.” This code was unwillingly adopted by the legislature

and named the “Body of Liberties”; the court being compelled to this action by the murmurs of the people, who had become impatient of a situation, which left all penalty to the discretion, and sometimes whimsical caprice, of the courts.¹

Of the code Winthrop writes in his Journal under date of December: “This session established 100 Laws, which were called the Body of Liberties, composed by Mr. Nathaniel Ward, sometime Pastor of the Church at Ipswich.” The code differs from Cotton’s Abstract materially, save that “in the article entitled Capital Laws each clause is supported by texts from the Old Testament.”² There is no need here of any analysis of this collection of laws, or of quotation, beyond one peculiar regulation as to forming a Church, viz.: “All the people of God within this Jurisdiction, who are not in a Church way, and be orthodox in judgement and not scandalous in life, shall have full liberty to gather themselves into a Church estate: Provided, that they do it in a Christian way, with due observance of the rules of Christ revealed in his word.”

though the permission here given is from the magistrate with a power of review, and it was possible for a strict constructionist to decide that no non-Congregational form of Church estate was in accordance with the rules of Christ, yet we have it on Winthrop’s¹ authority that there was a disposition to concede freedom of Presbyterian worship. This was in keeping with the greater liberality of the code in regard to other matters.² But such tendency toward a larger liberty in religion was speedily arrested by the “Presbyterian Cabal,” to be noted presently.

The adoption of the Body of Liberties was looked upon as happily settling the civil and ecclesiastical affairs of the Commonwealth. So Winthrop wrote in his “Small Treatise (1644): “It appears that the officers of this Body politic have a Rule to walk by in all their administrations, which Rule is the Word of God, and such conclusions and deductions as are or shall be regularly drawn from thence. . . . The fundamentals which God gave to the Commonwealth of Israel were a sufficient rule to them, to guide all their affairs: we having the same with all the additions, explanations, and deductions which have followed, it is not possible we should want a rule in any case, if God give us wisdom to discern it.”³ In much stronger language wrote Cotton, “The order of the Churches and the Commonwealth is now so settled in New England by common consent, that it brings to mind the new heaven and new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.”⁴

But this condition was not arrived at without struggle. Hardly had the first course been laid in the foundation of the new theocratic commonwealth when the troubler of its peace appeared. Roger Williams landed at Boston in February of 1631, and brought with him a bundle of notions which the Puritan founders could ill abide. A protégé of the great Sir

Edward Coke, whose word and actions in after years were so trenchant and influential on the side of freedom in the Great Rebellion, he had received from his patron incentives to the most liberal views. Educated at Cambridge and a graduate of Pembroke College, with a singularly active mind and as singular boldness in expression of opinions, he soon attracted to himself the hostile regard of Archbishop Laud, from the reach of whose arm he withdrew into New England. While in England he became a devoted friend of Hooker and Cotton, whom he preceded to America, and who were not able to equal him in extreme liberality of views; and the latter of whom, with his usual facility to coincide with the dominant party, is found assenting to the banishment of his friend.

On Williams’s arrival at Boston he at once signalized his peculiarity of mind by refusing to join the Boston Church,¹ because “they had not publicly declared repentance for former communion with the Church of England,” and also because the Boston Church had shown a sympathy with persecutors. He also expressed his opinion that the magistrate had no right to punish a breach of the first table of the law, and that his function was limited to those offences which violated only the second table. Despite the singularity of these views, his sweetness of disposition, his marked spirituality of religious character, and his evident ability so won upon the people of Salem that they immediately called him to take the place of teacher, vacated six months before by the death of Higginson.

From the pulpit of the Salem Church, Williams at once began to express these and other opinions quite opposite to those dominant in the Bay. The Boston authorities had already remonstrated with the Salem Church for calling Williams, and when to his first offence he added insistence on, and amplification of, his dangerous and distasteful opinions, their indignation was extreme. He was fearless in denouncing what he regarded as error, and especially the

fundamental error of the commonwealth in conceding to the magistrate any power over religious matters.

“Everything in the polity of Massachusetts was made subservient to the interest of the State, and that State was virtually and exclusively the Puritan Church.”¹ To the average New England Puritan of the day, of course with the implied premise that his Church was the only one that had the truth, it was difficult to make a distinction between the two blended institutions. To such a view the attempt to separate these factors of a godly state, and, more than that, the hardihood of asserting such union to be a sin against God and conscience, took on the gravity of a heresy, alike impious and dangerous to the public weal.

From the mutterings of the storm Williams, after but few months at Salem, deemed it prudent to retire for refuge to Plymouth. There he was received with both kindness and honor. The tolerant Pilgrims, happy in serving God in such way as their conscience approved, content to accord to other men an equal liberty and abstaining from all attempts to forcibly fuse things civil and religious, at once tendered to this first American refugee from religious persecution the place of teacher in their own Church, assistant to the pastor, Ralph Smith. Here Williams remained for two years, laboring most acceptably in his religious office, though, as must be understood from the fearless and conscientious nature of the man, abating nothing in his views of the dignity of the conscience and the natural freedom of the mind. Bradford² describes him as “a Man godly and zealous, having many precious Parts, but very unsettled in judgment. . . . His teaching was well approved, for the benefit of which I still bless God, and am thankful to him even for his sharpest Admonitions and Reproofs, so far as they agreed with Truth.”

correct in its opinion of Williams, who, besides the countless tokens of an almost prophetic insight into the nature of religion in its relation to the communal life and the natural liberty of mind, at the same time made evident an “unsettled judgment” in sundry matters of public concernment, the utterance of which served, not only to increase the opposition of his foes, but also to cloud the real issue involved.

One of these vagaries was his denunciation of the Boston Church for non-repentance of former membership in the English Church. The thought was absurd and its statement could only annoy. Another absurdity was his doctrine that the magistrate ought not to administer the oath to an unregenerate person, on the ground that making oath was an act of worship, which the unregenerate could not perform and the magistrate should not require! This was Williams’s objection to an act passed by the legislature of Massachusetts in April, 1634.¹

While at Plymouth, Williams issued a pamphlet in which he inveighed against the royal patent of Massachusetts as conferring title to lands which the king could not give, and which could only be rightfully obtained by purchase from the Indians. However correct in theory his position might be, as affected the Indian titles, the argument of the pamphlet was considered by the men of the Bay as both disloyal to the king and assailing the foundation of the colony.

Notwithstanding such manifestations, however, the Church of Salem, on the death of Skelton in January, 1633/4 called Williams to the vacant pastorate. This call he was quite ready to accept, but, on seeking dismission from the Plymouth Church, he was met by unwillingness to release him. The character and ability of Williams had so won

upon the people that they were much disturbed. At the same time there was doubt as to how far his idiosyncrasies might carry him, and the question was decided by Brewster’s suggestion that there were “abler men in the Bay, who could better deal with him, than the men at Plymouth.”¹ Meanwhile, the neighboring ministers, looking with great disfavor on the prospect of Williams’s return to Salem, complained to the general court, alleging the disloyalty of his pamphlet. This charge he seems to have met with disclaimers of all disloyal intentions, so that the court felt itself restrained from prohibitive action, though looking upon the course of the Salem Church as “a great contempt of authority.” In consequence of this the court refused a petition from Salem for a grant of adjoining land.

More adverse action, however, could not be long delayed, as Williams, settled in his charge, was undeterred by authority or by fear from the utterance of his obnoxious sentiments. He was ever gentle in his attitude toward individuals, never resenting personal injuries or returning reproaches, yet unyielding and uncompromising in his zeal for religious liberty. So he found many things to condemn in the surrounding conditions. There was not a principle of the dominant theocracy which he did not antagonize. He denounced all intermeddling of the magistrate with religious matters. “Let any man show me a commission given by the Son of God to civil powers in these spiritual affairs of His Christian kingdom and worship.”² He objected to restriction of the franchise and office to Church members; to compulsory attendance on religious service; to the civil tax for support of the ministry. The civil power had no administration in matters of heresy. “The straining of men’s consciences by the civil power is so far from making men faithful to God or man, that it is the ready way to render them false to both.”³

In the meantime, while the magistrates were smarting under such criticism of their chosen methods, occurred at Salem the silly action of Endicott in cutting the cross from the English flag, on the ground that it smacked of popery. With this folly Williams, says Mather in the Magnalia, “was but obliquely and remotely concerned.” It is not probable that he was concerned in it at all, or had any sympathy with the perpetrator of such foolishness. Two more opposite spirits were not in the colony than Williams and Endicott. But the action precipitated matters. The general court reprimanded Endicott and deprived him of official capacity for a year, and then began measures of reproof to the Church at Salem and its pastor. The Church was notified that their petition for land was denied, because they retained Williams. On this Williams and the Church sent letters of remonstrance to the other Churches asking them to admonish the court for its injustice to Salem. At the next session of the court the Salem delegates were refused seats until they should “give satisfaction about the letters.” Against this exclusion Endicott protested, and was at once committed until “he should acknowledge his fault.”¹ The court then summoned Williams to answer for his expressions of opinion and for the letter to the Churches. Williams justified his actions and doctrine, and by the court (October, 1635) was sentenced to banishment within six weeks. Afterward the court extended the time limit until the spring, on account of the inclement season, but attached the condition of complete silence as to his peculiar views.

The Church of Salem was cowed and made humble apology for their letter, on which they received the desired grant of land. Williams was excluded from the pulpit; but in his own house, whither many of his friends resorted, he refused to observe the command to silence and freely uttered his opinions. This was regarded by the magistrates as a flagrant breach of faith and order, especially as “many were

much taken with the apprehension of his godliness,” and “his opinions were contagious.” They resolved to send him to England on a ship about to sail. Williams, unnotified of this intention, was summoned to Boston; but he, apprehending violence, refused to come. The magistrates then sent a boat to Salem with a force sufficient to arrest him and convey him to the ship; but when the company reached Salem their prey had escaped. Forewarned by friends, Williams had fled forth into the wintry wilderness, to find among its savage denizens a refuge from his Christian brethren.¹

Thus took form the first case of religious persecution by the Puritans of Massachusetts, after the expulsion of the Brownes. It is possible, indeed, to contend that the action against Williams was mainly for teaching doctrine subversive of the civil order. That his teaching had such tendency is beyond dispute. Williams declared himself opposed to the structural principles of the commonwealth. If his doctrine should be allowed, if men should be largely persuaded by it, then presently all the religious defences of the state would be destroyed, the unregenerate would have equal power and privilege with the saints, and the entire fabric of the theocracy would fall to the ground. This is evident, not only as a thing of fear to the authorities of that day, but as a necessary issue from the prevalence of such opinions. To men in power the teaching of Williams sounded like the voice of anarchy.

Justice to the founders of Massachusetts requires that this should be remembered. Given a commonwealth such as they had founded, and a resolution to maintain it in its purity, it is difficult to see how they could do otherwise than expel one who threatened its very existence. While Williams spoke from the religious standpoint and in defence of the God-given rights of conscience — and there is no evidence that he uttered a word designed against the state and social order — yet it is easy to understand that the standpoint of the authorities might be one which regarded chiefly the civil

conditions. The question between them was radical. Is a theocracy — a state merged with a Church — right and possible? He said “No.” They said “Yes; and such shall be here.” After that, there was nothing but expulsion for the non-content — an expulsion which could logically base itself on the alleged disturbance of the public peace and civil order. Much as we admire the wide vision of Williams, so clearly discerning the principles of spiritual freedom; deeply as we are persuaded of the fundamental error in the Massachusetts constitution, we yet cannot deny to their action against him this favorable and, if their theory of the state were right, justifying construction. With it, there still remains the question how far they might go in the repression of a purely religious opinion, which in no true sense involved the fundamental principles of the state.

The answer to this question was not long delayed, and for it the materials were already prepared while Williams was yet undisturbed at Salem. In 1634 there came to Boston that remarkable woman, Anne Hutchinson, whom Mather describes as “a gentlewoman of haughty carriage, a busie Spirit, competent wit, and a voluble tongue;” and who with her purely religious teaching created in the colony a far greater disturbance than did Williams.

It is impossible to be satisfied with this slighting description by Mather. What he said of Mrs. Hutchinson was true; but she was far more and better than that, a person of exceptional and varied ability, friendly and helpful to those about her, able to “minister to body, mind, and spirit.”¹ To a very considerable intellectual faculty, acute rather than profound, she added that dangerous sensibility to enthusiasm which easily passes into fanatic vagaries. With an attractive personality, and no small amount of that quality which our modern phrase calls “personal magnetism,” she exerted a powerful fascination upon others, especially upon those of her own sex, who looked upon her as a natural confidant.

Clearly, this was a dangerous addition to a colony, where the will of the minister and the magistrate affected to be a law to every one for both action and thought.

She was the colonial type of those women of quick religious sympathy in our own day, who gather about them companies of disciples. She began with quiet gatherings of women in her own house for religious discourse, and early fell into the habit of criticising the doctrine of the ministers in their Sunday preaching and Thursday lectures. Her comments were sharp and accompanied with much denunciation of the ministers themselves. There is no need to revive the details of the controversy thence arising, or to attempt to explain the almost unintelligible jargon of much of the discussion, wherein distinctions without differences were multiplied and magnified into absurd importance. The main doctrine of the new prophetess was in three points: 1st, that the covenant of grace had entirely superseded the covenant of works; 2d, that no amount of sanctification or personal holiness could be regarded as evidence of a justified condition (hence the name Anti-nomian applied to the controversy); and 3d, that the Holy Spirit personally dwells in a justified soul.¹ With these sufficiently startling propositions, as criteria for judgment of the ministers and their teachings, she set aside most of their preaching and declared that all the ministers, except Cotton and Wheelwright, were still under the covenant of works and unconverted. The excitement caused by this teaching was beyond measure. The ministers were naturally indignant, and esteemed that in their persons the ark of God had been touched with profane hands. “The town and country were distressed by these subtleties, and every man and woman, who had brains enough to form some imperfect conception of them, inferred and maintained some other point. . . . The fear of God and love of our neighbor seemed to be laid by and out of the question.”²

Almost the entire community of Boston were carried away by the novelties. John Cotton was favorably disposed toward them, though he did not come out decidedly in their favor; while his colleague Wilson, with the rest of the ministry, was bitterly opposed. With the outraged ministry was ranged the great majority of the general court, who themselves had been pilloried by Mrs. Hutchinson as not in the covenant of grace. To these grave guardians of the state it seemed that the pillars of the commonwealth were shaken, especially when some of Mrs. Hutchinson’s feather-brained disciples undertook to show that a person under the covenant of grace would be guilty of sin in obeying the orders of a magistrate or military officer, who was still under the covenant of works! Logically, it were easy to prove that this absurdity was a just deduction from the theocratic principles of the magistracy, but they could neither see it nor allow it.

But among the magistrates themselves Mrs. Hutchinson had some powerful adherents. The chief military personage of the colony, Captain Underhill, was on her side. But her greatest disciple was the governor, Sir Harry Vane, the younger.

Vane was one of the noblest characters of his age, though “the subject of widely differing judgments.”¹ Cromwell called him “a juggler“; Clarendon, “a man of extraordinary parts, a pleasant wit, a great understanding“; Swift, “a dangerous, enthusiastic beast.” Hallam describes him as, “not only incorrupt, but disinterested, inflexible in conforming his public conduct to his principles, and averse to every sanguinary and oppressive measure.” Milton in his honor composed one of his finest sonnets —

His American experience was a short and disappointing episode in his life. Coming to New England shortly after

the arrival of Mrs. Hutchinson, his youthful ardor was soon captivated by her religious enthusiasm. The adhesion of so prominent a personage to her views served to add to the popularity in Boston, which his personal dualities and rank had already made for him, and, though but twenty-four years of age, he was made governor at the election of 1636.

For months the colony lived in the midst of an ever growing excitement, as over a seething volcano. The signal for eruption was unintentionally given by a sermon of John Wheelwright, the brother-in-law of Mrs. Hutchinson, who had followed her to America.¹ Though a zealous advocate of her views, he was far removed from the spirit of the agitator. A man of gentle disposition, nothing could have been farther from his thoughts than the making of an uproar. But with so much powder on every side there needed but a small spark to cause an explosion. Judged of at this day the sermon seems a very small matter indeed to create so great a disturbance. It defended the new views, but without acrimony, and criticised some of the public conditions under which the colony was established. This was enough for the magistracy, who construed Wheelwright as counselling violent change in the constitution, and at once arrested him on a charge of sedition.

On this the steps toward eliminating the disturbers of the community followed rapidly one upon another. A synod of the Church was called to give ecclesiastical judgment on the heresy. This body met at Newtown (Cambridge) in the spring of 1637, and gravely sat itself down to discuss “eighty-two erroneous opinions” taken from the teachings of Mrs. Hutchinson and her brother.² Full liberty of discussion was given, with the curious proviso that “no one should be held responsible for the opinions he defended unless he acknowledged them to be his own.”³ The arch heretic and her

brother were examined. “Inquisition was made into men’s private judgment, as well as into their declarations and practices.” Cotton acknowledged that most of the “opinions” were erroneous, but could not condemn all, and drew upon himself the sharp criticism of some of his brethren. The popular pastor of the Boston Church was in an evil case, with the vast majority of his parishioners on one side of the fence, and that of the ministers and magistrates on the other. After various attempts at compromise he, according to his nature and manner, got himself down where the chief power lay, with more or less of a wrench to his own convictions.¹

The synod condemned the heretical opinions and reported its action to the general court. That body met shortly after, in May, 1637, at Newtown, “because of the excitement in Boston,” and proceeded to elect a governor, putting Winthrop in the room of Vane and showing to the latter scant courtesy in any attempts he made at defence of his position and conduct. In order to forestall other heretical disturbances, the court prohibited the harboring of persons whose religious views were considered dangerous. The bill was opposed by Vane, to whom Winthrop replied, “the intent of the law is to preserve the welfare of the body.”² This law extended the statute of 1630, which prohibited the settling of any in the colony without leave from the governor and assistants. It is evident also that the proposers of the law were providing for the severity of sentence already designed toward the heretics already with them.

At this session of the court was presented a “Remonstrance” signed by sixty citizens, most of them residents of Boston and among them two members of the court itself, William Aspinwall and John Coggeshall. The Remonstrance deprecated the action of the synod and besought time court to refrain from interference with Mrs. Hutchinson and

her friends. This paper roused the anger of the court, as a “speaking evil of dignities” and insubordination. The two deputies were expelled from their seats in the body, and the court called upon all the signers of the paper to acknowledge their fault. Ten of them weakened and desired leave to withdraw their names, while the balance were condemned to be disarmed — a punishment involving at that day no little disgrace and conveying the utterly unjustified implication that they had treasonable intentions.¹ One individual sentence dealt with Stephen Greensmith, “for saying that all the ministers save Wheelwright, Cotton, and perhaps Hooker did teach a covenant of works.” He was condemned to a fine of £40, to give £100 bond for good behavior, and to acknowledge his fault in every Church.

At the November session of the general court final action was taken against the leaders. Though a strictly civil body, it really sat as having ecclesiastical, or religious, function, and its whole process against Mrs. Hutchinson and her brother was conditioned upon their religious opinions. Both were banished from the colony. Winthrop’s language is “Finding that two so opposite parties could not contain in the same body, without apparent hazard of ruin to the whole, it was agreed to send away some of the principal.”²

After this action of the general court, Mrs. Hutchinson was summoned to answer for her errors to the Church, of which she was a member. There also the decision was against her, and Cotton, “fully persuaded that he had been made her stalking horse,” was ordered to pronounce the censure!³ “One cannot read the proceedings without feeling that, if only the scene had been changed to an ecclesiastical court in

England, the whole trial would have formed an edifying chapter in Puritan martyrology.”¹

So the colony was purged, and by a process which it is impossible to defend; for the arguments of danger to the state, which threw a color of propriety upon the action against Williams, cannot here find force. There was no danger to the state in the views of Mrs. Hutchinson. Given their full sway they would have made a purer theocracy than that of Winthrop and Wilson. The whole proceeding was due to religious intolerance and to the rancor of the ministers, whose spiritual character had been aspersed.

After the expulsion of the heretics the court was able for a season to settle down to other matters, as says the gentle Shepherd of Newtown, “Thus the Lord having delivered the colony from war with Indians and Familists (who arose and fell together), He was pleased to direct the hearts of the magistrates (then keeping Court orderly in our town, because of these stirs at Boston) to think of a College.”²

The next occasion for the exercise of the repressive religious functions of the Massachusetts magistrates arose within a short time after the exile of the Antinomians. It was the affair of Gorton, in regard to whose career there is much confusion of statement and much contradictory representation. The record is not clear as to the date or place of Samuel Gorton’s first appearance in New England. Probably he was in Boston at the time of Mrs. Hutchinson’s trial and exile. As though to avoid similar process against himself, he departed to Plymouth, where he was found voiding his peculiar opinions in 1638 Morton describes him as “a proud and pestilent seducer,”¹ given to “all manner of blasphemies,” and freely expressing himself in great contempt for both the civil and ecclesiastical order of the colony. The man was evidently what in modern parlance would be called a “crank,” goaded by a continual spirit of unrest, prompting him to assail everything which failed to accord with his own views.

What those views were it is somewhat difficult to say, beyond the statement that they were utterly averse to the opinions generally obtaining in the colonies. His writings are filled with unintelligible rant, in which the clearest timings seem to be a claim of inner illumination by the Spirit, and condemnation of the union of Church and State. Withal, he was of a turbulent disposition, at least in the earlier years of his American life, and seemed to love strife for strife’s sake.²

It is quite within the demands of justice to suppose that the action of the Plymouth and Rhode Island authorities against Gorton were for civil reasons, a fact not so clear in the action of time Massachusetts magistrates.³ At Plymouth his lack of reverence for all constituted authorities exposed him to the complaint of Ralph Smith, that he “carried on

mutinously and seditiously.” On this complaint he was tried by the court, and sentenced to fine and to banishment within fourteen days. Going to Rhode Island, he very soon made himself obnoxious by his opposition to the authorities, toward whom he used uncivil language so offensive that the court felt compelled to repress it. Before the court he denied its authority. “The Governor, Mr. Coddington, saying in court, ‘You that are for the King, lay hold on Gorton’; he on the other side cried out, ‘All you that are for the King, lay hold on Coddington,’ — whereupon he was banished the Island.”¹ It is not quite certain that the Rhode Island people whipped or imprisoned him. Certainly, they expelled him for disorderly conduct.

Thence he went to Providence Plantations and was received by Williams and permitted to remain, though the latter had no sympathy with his restless disposition and impracticable caprices, he was allowed to settle near Providence, but seems to have given some trouble to Williams and his colony by unjust treatment of the neighboring Indians.² The lands on which he had settled were claimed by the Massachusetts government, which, because of complaint by the Indians, summoned Gorton to answer to the court at Boston. To this summons he returned a contemptuous refusal to appear;³ whereupon the authorities forcibly arrested him and conveyed him to Boston. Here he was brought to trial on “twenty-six blasphemous particulars” obtained from his writings, adjudged guilty, and thrown into prison. Barry says that the ministers were for death, but the magistrates dissented.⁴ Gorton himself states that he barely escaped

death. Twenty-six years afterward he sent a petition to the court of commissioners in England, in which he describes the treatment he had received. The years had not dulled his sense of wrong. “They took offence,” he wrote, “that we could not close with them in their Church orders, neither could we approve of their civil course in divers respects. . . . They preached us in their pulpits as gross heretics, and men not worthy to live upon the earth. . . . They tried us upon life and death — had resolved upon our death, in case we would not falsify our faith to God and the King. . . . They. . . put it to the major vote whether your petitioners should live or die, our lives escaping by two votes.”¹

However disorderly Gorton may have been, his trial and sentence were for charges of irreligion, though the modern reader would find it hard to gather “blasphemous particulars” “from the unmeaning jargon of his hysterical writings. Gorton, in a letter to Morton, whose Memorial was published before the former’s death, solemnly denies the charge of blasphemy. “I appeal to God, the Judge of all secrets, that there was never such a thought in my heart.”²

There is no doubt that the man was scandalously and cruelly abused. The treatment was only possible by an authority which regarded departure from the established religious order as sedition against the state. That Gorton either was grossly misunderstood at the first, or sobered by his afflictions became afterward worthy of public confidence and respect, seems abundantly proved by Judge Eddy, Secretary of State for Rhode Island, who wrote, “I have read the records of the colony from the beginning until after the death of Gorton, and I find that he was almost constantly in office, and not an instance of reproach is recorded against him.”³

The next important spasm and outputting of theocratic intolerance is found in the action against what is called the “Presbyterian Cabal.” This name is something of a misnomer, for the movers of it were not specially concerned for Presbytery, but for general liberty of religion and for citizenship without regard to religious faith. The name seems to have arisen from a supposition of sympathy with the movement in the parliament of the day, which was predominantly Presbyterian. So far as we can gather, the ecclesiastical preferences of the cabal were rather with Episcopacy.

In 1646, Dr. Robert Child, Samuel Maverick, William Vassal, Thomas Fowle, and three others petitioned the general courts of Plymouth¹ and Massachusetts for religious freedom and a redress of grievances. Rev. Peter Hubbard of Hingham, a Presbyterian, was either one of the petitioners or in open sympathy with them. The petition complained of several onerous conditions:² that the fundamental laws of England were not allowed in the colony; that non-members of the colonial Churches were denied civil rights and privileges, though freeborn Englishmen; and that many sober, righteous, and godly persons, members of Churches in England, were debarred from Christian privileges. The relief prayed for was that the court should, 1st, establish the common law of England; 2d, open the franchise to all Englishmen, who “were quiet, peaceable, and forward with heart, hand, and purse, to promote the public good”; and 3d, “allow divers sober, righteous, and godly men, members of the Church of England, to be taken into your congregations and to enjoy with you all the liberties and ordinances Christ hath purchased; “or else to have liberty to form Churches of their own. The petition concluded with the statement that,

if its prayers should be granted, “we hope to see the now contemned ordinances of God highly prized; the gospel, much darkened, break forth as the sun at noon-day; and Christian Charity and brotherly love, almost frozen, wax warm.

The petitioners had demanded relief from taxes, in case the court should refuse these requests, and threatened an appeal to England. The general court of Massachusetts was greatly offended and cited the petitioners to appear before it, as “not accused for petitioning, but for contemptuous and seditious expressions.” Thus, again, non-conformity was sedition, subversive of both Church and State. The petition was refused by the court, with the somewhat contemptuous language: “These remonstrants would be thought to be a representative part of all the non-freemen of the country; but when we have pulled off their vizards, we find them no other than Robert Child, Thomas Fowle, etc.” It was intimated to the petitioners that, if they would apologize, their offence would be forgiven. This they refused to do, and they were fined, Mr. Hubbard being mulcted in the sum of £20.

Some of them resolved to go to England with their complaint, a statement of which was drawn up and signed by twenty-five men, non-freemen. The paper was seized by the court and its signers were fined, on the ground that no appeal could be taken to England from the action of the Massachusetts authority.

A statement of the trouble, however, did reach England in the form of a pamphlet with the fantastic title, “New England’s Jonas Cast-Up at London” (1647).¹ The pamphlet represented the Petition as the Jonas, too heavy for the New England stomach, now cast up at London. It related the story of the petition from the standpoint of Child and his party, and submitted some Queries for an English answer; whether all English inhabitants of the colony, having lands,

are not freemen; and whether the petitioners ought to be hindered from “settling in a Church way” according to the Churches in England. To invite the sympathy of the powers at home, there is a biting allusion to “a book lately set forth by Edward Winslow against Samuel Gorton, intituled ‘Hypocrasie Unmasked,’ in which there is a deep and subtle plot against the Laws of England and Liberties of English Subjects, and the Gentlemen who are now suffering in England.”

Winslow was himself in England, as agent for Plymouth, at the time the pamphlet was there published, and the fact that the English authorities abstained from any interference in the matter is attributed by Hutchinson to his prudence and influence.

The happy (?) conclusion of this Cabal was probably the occasion for a congratulatory letter of Symonds to Winthrop. Asking, “What seems to be God’s end in bringing His people here?” he furnishes the answer: “1st, To be an occasion to stir up the two nations to set upon reformation of religion; 2d, To have liberty and power to set up God’s own ordinances in Church government, and thereby to hold forth matter of conviction to the Episcopacy and others, that this way of Church government and civil government may stand together.”¹

The allegation that the ulterior design of Child and his associates was political, looking to the overthrow of the colonial government, is quite unsupported by evidence. The relief asked for by them, if granted, would have undoubtedly wrought an essential change, but it was a change sought at the hands of the authorities themselves, and would have involved no more of revolution than obtains in any case of reform conceded by the governing authority. Nor can the charge be on the ground of the appeal to England, for such appeal was felt to be the natural right of Englishmen; and had occasion to resort thereto arisen for the men who condemned

Child and Maverick, none would have been quicker than they to avail themselves of its hope of relief.

The immediate consequence of the cabal was the calling of the second synod of the Churches. To the theocratic mind, alarmed by this attempt to modify the sacred institution of an ecclesiastical commonwealth, there appeared a necessity for strengthening its defences; and for this purpose the general court issued a call for the synod. Curiously enough, and most inconsistently with their avowed principles, some of the ministers and Churches took umbrage at this action, as something which the court had not the authority to do.¹ The dissatisfaction was specially expressed. in Boston, where “about thirty or forty of the members excepted that the Churches had a right to meet in synod without the intervention of the magistrates.”

The court, anxious for the synodical meeting, in order to allay the jealousy in some of the Churches, offered a compromise, directing that “the call should be drawn up in the form of a motion and not of command.” Avoiding decision as to the right of the churches to meet in synod without the magistrates’ permission, the court resolved: “Although this Court makes no question of their lawful power by the word of God to assemble the Churches, upon occasion of counsel for anything which may concern the practice of the Churches. . . . (it is) thought expedient on the present occasion not to make use of that power, but hereby rather declare it to be the desire of the General Court.” This deliverance satisfied all but the Boston Churches, which, however, were persuaded by Mr. Norton to send delegates.

The synod met at Cambridge, June, 1647, but after a few days adjourned on account of an epidemic, and did not reassemble until August of the next year. Then during a session of fourteen days, the synod adopted the Westminster

Confession of Faith, and settled the scheme of government and discipline, according to a Congregational model, in the famous “Cambridge Platform.” This action was submitted to the general court for approval, which body referred it, in 1649, to the Churches for their opinions. The Churches fully approved and so reported to the general court, whereupon the court by act of 1651 formally ratified the proceedings of the synod, and enacted them into law for the Churches of Massachusetts.

The various steps in this process deserve notice as illustrating the constitution of Church and State. By it the civil legislature appears as the highest authority in the Church. The synod put the finishing touches to the ecclesiastical structure. By formal statute Congregationalism became Law, and any attempt to institute another form of worship became a punishable offence.

In the spirit of this constitution the minuter history of the period shows the general court interfering with the business of the Churches on any pretext, of which a few instances may be noted.

It appears that, while some non-members of Churches were aggrieved that they were denied the franchise, there were some Church-members not alive to their privileges as such, who, for the purpose of escaping public service, neglected to be made freemen. To meet the latter situation, the general court, 1643,¹ ordered the Churches to deal by way of discipline with such of their members as refuse to take their freedom. In 1650 the Second Church of Boston called Michael Powell to its pastorate. Powell had been a tavern-keeper in Dedham, and a member of the general court. In 1648 he removed to Boston, where he became noted for a “gift in prayer and exhortation.” The court forbade his installation on the ground that, while he might be a ruling elder, he was unfit to be pastor, because “lacking in such abilities, learning, and qualifications as are requisite and necessary for an

able ministry of the people.” To this action both Powell and the Church submitted without remonstrance¹ Indeed, the docile spirit of Powell seems to have been chiefly occupied by a fear lest the authorities might think him capable of insubordination. The imperative tone assumed by them moves him to reply: “My humble request is that you would not have such hard thoughts of me, that I would consent to be ordained without your concurrence.”²

After the death of Cotton in 1652 the First Church of Boston called John Norton of Ipswich, whom the Ipswich people were unwilling to release. Hence arose a sharp contention between the two Churches, with which the general court interfered. On its own motion, the court called a council of elders and two messengers from each of twelve towns, and paid all expenses out of the public treasury.³ Again, in 1663, on the death of Norton, the Boston Church called the celebrated John Owen of England, and the court sent an official letter to Owen urging his acceptance.⁴

The purity of doctrine also, as well as the order of the Churches, engaged the attention of the general court. In 1650 they summoned William Pynchon, a magistrate of Springfield, to answer for a book written by him on the atonement.⁵ So serious did they consider the matter that they sent to England a “Declaration and Protestation,” asserting that they were no party to the book, but “on the contrary, we detest and abhor many of the opinions and assertions therein as false, erroneous, and heretical.” The court ordered that the book be burned in the market-place by the hangman, after the next Thursday’s lecture, and appointed Norton to prepare an answer and refutation, for which service he was voted £20. Pynchon’s reply to

the summons was so explanatory that the court in May, 1651, “having hopes,” allowed him to return home, taking Norton’s answer “to consider thereof.” In the following October the court was not satisfied, and put Pynchon under bonds of £100 to appear the next May. Tired and disgusted by the persecution, Pynchon returned to England.¹

In 1651 the court summoned Rev. Marmaduke Matthews of Malden, whom in the preceding year they had fined £10 for preaching in an “unauthorized” congregation, to answer to the charge of “preaching divers erroneous, unsound, and unsafe opinions.” In the trial a certain Thomas Line, a member of the Malden Church, testified against Matthews, and for this testimony the Church proceeded to discipline him. Thereupon the general court interfered and forbade the process, bearing “witness with what tenderness and caution he gave his aforesaid testimony,” and advising the Church to call a council to “consider the matter.”²

The case of President Dunster of Harvard is another interesting illustration. Mr. Dunster had become a Baptist, and on this account the general court, in 1654, called on the officers of the College “not to continue in office any teacher unsound in the faith.” In 1657 Mr. Dunster was summoned by the court to answer for not having his own child baptized.³

The next notorious act of persecution, after Gorton’s experience, is noted in the treatment inflicted on Clarke and Holmes, at Lynn. John Clarke was a friend of Mrs. Hutchinson and went with Coddington to Rhode Island. There he became a Baptist and the pastor of the Church at Newport. Obadiah Holmes was originally of Salem, but was thence dismissed to the Congregational Church at Seekonk in the

Plymouth jurisdiction. Coming into contact with Clarke, he was influenced to Baptist views and was baptized at Newport. Returning to Seekonk, he set up there a Baptist Church.¹

In 1651 Clarke and Holmes went to Lynn, where dwelt certain sympathizers in their Baptist opinions, and held religious services in a private house. For this they were arrested, taken before the magistrates, and compelled to “go to meeting.” There Clarke requested permission to speak and, being allowed the privilege, said: “As strangers to each other’s inward standing in respect to God, we cannot conjoyn act in faith, and I could not judge that you are gathered together and walk according to the visible order of our Lord.” Here he was stopped by the magistrates. Both were sent to Boston and thrown into prison. On trial they were sentenced to a fine of £20 each; to remain in prison until the fine was paid, or “to be well whipt.” Clarke paid his fine and was released; but Holmes refused and was “whipped unmercifully.” “A sword of steel,” said Clarke, “cannot come near or touch the spirit or mind of man.”²

The tidings of the harsh treatment of these men were soon carried to England, where they created no small amount of criticism and disgust. Clarke himself took care that the story should be exploited in a pamphlet printed in 1652, entitled “Ill-Newes from New England. A Narrative of New England’s Persecution: wherein is declared, That, while Old

England is becoming New, New England is becoming Old.” The title was suggested by the anonymous “Good Newes from New England” (London, 1648), abounding in fulsome of the colonial constitution and referring to Clarke and his Rhode Island friends in contemptuous terms.¹

This persecution of Clarke and Holmes drew from Sir Richard Saltonstall the famous letter to Cotton and Wilson to which brief reference has been made. “It doth not a little grieve my spirit,” he wrote, “to hear that you fine, whip, and imprison men for their conscience. . . . We hoped the Lord would have given you so much light and love there that you might have been eyes to God’s people here, and not to practice those courses in a wilderness, which you went so far to prevent. These rigid ways have laid you very low in the hearts of the saints. I do assure you that I have heard them pray in the public assemblies that the Lord would give you meek and humble spirits, not to strive so much for uniformity, as to keep the unity of the faith in the bond of peace. When I was in Holland. . . . some Christians there. . . desired me to write to the governor to know if those who differ from you in opinion. . . . might be permitted to live among you; to which I received this short answer from our then governor, Mr. Dudley, ‘God forbid that our love for the truth should be grown so cold that we should tolerate error.’. . . I hope you do not assume to yourselves infallibility of judgment, when the most learned of the apostles confessed that he knew but in part and saw but darkly as through a glass; for God is light, and no further than He doth illumine us can we see, be our parts and learning never so great.”² The reply of Cotton and Wilson to this noble letter was in painful contrast to its dignity and spiritual insight. Of Clarke and Holmes they say: “The imprisonment of either of them was no detriment. I believed fared neither of them better at home, and I am sure that Holmes had not

been so well clad of many years before. . . . Do you think that God hath crowned the State with so many victories, that they should (suffer) so many miscreants to pluck the crown of sovereignty from Christ’s head? . . . and so leave Christ no visible kingdom upon earth? . . . . We believe there is a vast difference between men’s inventions and God’s instances. We fled from men’s inventions, to which we should else have been compelled. We compel none to men’s inventions. If our ways (rigid ways, as you call them) have laid us low in the hearts of God’s people, yea and of the saints (as you stile them), we do not believe it is any part of their Saintship.” This, considering all the attendant circumstances, is about the most lamentable expression of Puritan bigotry which the records preserve to us.

In the decades between 1640 and 1660 there was at once a growing discontent among the people with the repressive spirit of the theocracy, and also an increasing bitterness of intolerance on the part of the ministers and authorities. In the eyes of those in power any form of dissent became more and more dangerous and disloyal, and they grew the more outspoken in denunciation as the mutterings of discontent became frequent and loud. Norton declared that variety was fatal to religion.¹ “Religion, he said with emphasis, “admits of no eccentric notions. Ward’s “Simple Cobler of Aggawam in America”² was published in 1647. Besides the two or three quotations already made from its pages, the following may serve further to illustrate the ruling spirit of the day: “God doth nowhere in His word tolerate Christian States to give Tolerations to adversaries of His Truth, if they have power in their hands to prevent them. . . . Here is lately brought us a Magna Charta, whereof the first Article of Constitution firmly provides free stable-room and litter for all kinds of Consciences, be they never so dirty or jadish. My heart hath naturally detested Tolerations of divers

Religions or of one Religion in segregant shapes. He that unwillingly assents to it, if he examines his heart by daylight, his Conscience will tell him he is either an Atheist, or an Heretick, or an Hypocrite, or at best a captive to some Lust.”¹

The success of the people and parliament in England in their struggle with the king could not fail to reflect itself in the minds of many in the colony, where it was felt that, as inhabitants they were deprived of some of the rights of freeborn Englishmen, and in the matter of religion, they suffered under a law of uniformity no less rigid than that, which in England the parliamentary triumph had set aside. In point of religion it was felt that England was now far more free than Massachusetts, and the malcontents were dissatisfied that in New England they should suffer more restriction than they would at home.

Hence there was a continual outcropping of trouble for the theocratic rulers. The suppression of Williams, Mrs. Hutchinson, Gorton, Child, and Clarke did not bring the hoped-for relief; while the denial of suffrage to all non-members of churches was creating a dangerous feeling in the community, where in 1660 the unenfranchised population was in a large majority.

Against tolerance of divergent religious teaching, and to prevent the incoming of foreign unapproved preachers, such as Clarke, the general court, in 1653, enacted “that no person within this jurisdiction shall undertake any constant course of public preaching or propagating, without the approbation of the elders of four the next Churches, or of the County Court.” It was also declared that any person maintaining any heterodox or erroneous doctrine should be questioned and censured by the county court. Against this legislation a protest was made to the next session of the general court by the Church and town of Woburn. This was altogether

a new timing, and might well have been considered as a handwriting on the wall.¹

In 1659 the general court gave legal expression to the deep Puritan horror of all things savoring of popery, by making the observance of Christmas a punishable offence. The first generation of colonists were all of one mind as to the iniquity of such observance, and no legislation was needed. But thirty years had seen no small change in the popular mind. A process was going on which the more godly viewed as a fearful degeneration of morals. The writings of the Mathers and others of the day abound in lamentation over the growing “godlessness” of the community. One of its indications was the disposition “to keep Christmas,” and hence the action of the legislature.²

In 1665 the king, Charles II., demanded the repeal of this law, but it was not repealed until 1681. This repeal, however, did not commend the day to the more pious New England mind, and men, now (1902) not much beyond middle life, can remember a childhood to which the festivity of Christmas was forbidden.

To the leaders of Massachusetts policy it seems never to have suggested itself, that the so-called “relaxation of morals” was the natural reaction from the austere and rigid system, which they had founded and were seeking to maintain as the ark of God. We are not, indeed, to understand the lamentations about prevalent ungodliness as importing the same moral condition as such plaints would suggest

to-day.¹ There was no woful and frequent abandonment of morals. Society was sober and decorous. The things which were so severely reprobated were for the most part innocent departures from the stern, unsmiling austerity of primeval Puritanism. The natural pleasures of youth, the gayety of a husking-bee, the merriment of any festival gathering, were considered sinful frivolities and indicative of a culpable lack of religion.

More important and of much graver moment to the integrity of the theocratic system was the fact that, the majority of the male population were outside of the Churches. There were many children not baptized because their parents were not communicants. Many of time latter, though themselves baptized in infancy, had neglected to become communing members of the Churches, for various reasons; such as a lack of “spiritual change,” conscious unfitness, dissent from the Church creed or polity, or addiction to some other form of faith and worship not recognized by the law. In this class were many children and grandchildren of the original settlers, while to their number were added many immigrants of a later day. Every one of this large number of non-Church members, no matter how well educated, wealthy, or fitted for citizenship any of them might be, was excluded from the franchise and ineligible to office. This constituted a great danger. The unenfranchised majority was giving louder and more frequent expression to their discontent, and it became evident that in. some way the law, or its application, must lose a portion of its rigidity.² The expedient adopted, the famous “Half-Way Covenant,” while pacifying murmurs, was the worst thing that could possibly have been devised, sacrificing the purity of the Church and the spirituality of religious profession to the consistency of the civil statute. The proper timing for them to do was to change the freeman’s law, which restricted the

franchise to the members of the established Church. An example of the broader base of freedom was before them in the experience of Connecticut, where the right to vote and hold office was never confined to church-members, and where this more liberal citizenship had wrought only to the good and peace of the state.

But to the men of Massachusetts the fundamental principle of their theocracy was too dear and sacred for them to adopt such relief. Whatever should be done, the voter must still be a member of the Church! So the only way to widen the franchise was to open the door of the Church! And this was the expedient adopted, which, while relieving the immediate clamor, inflicted on the Church baleful consequences not removed for nearly one hundred years.

It is not to be understood that there has been preserved any written outline of such purpose on the part of the leaders. We may suppose that, in their zeal for the freeman’s they had no eyes for the danger to the Church. Nay — more than this — from the fact that in their action they made no mention of the franchise whatever, it may be argued that their chief design was to make the Church easier of ingress, and to bring into its fold many of those who were without, that access to its ordinances might prove to be “means of grace” to them. But the logic of events is too clear to allow the supposition that the effect upon the franchise was absent from their minds; and it seems only just to conclude that this effect was an ulterior, though unannounced, design.

The active agent in this work of expansion was the third synod of the Churches, called to consider the state of religion, which met in Boston in 1662. The special work for which the synod is famous was its deliverance in regard to the “Subjects of Baptism.” In this it was declared that, “The infant seed of confederate visible believers are members of the same Church with their parents when grown up, are personally under the watch, discipline, and government of the Church.” To this was added, “Church members, who

were admitted in minority, understanding the doctrines of faith, and publicly professing their assent thereto; not scandalous in life, and solemnly owning the covenant, wherein they give themselves up and their children to the Lord, and subject themselves to the government of Christ in Church,” may demand baptism for their children.¹ There can be no doubt that the doctrine of this deliverance is from a Calvinistic standpoint thoroughly true, and corrected the error which, in the past, had made participation in the Lord’s Supper by the parent a condition for baptism of the child. But the practical evil of the synodical action was twofold: in making no proper distinction between baptismal and communicant membership; and, as the result proved, in conferring on the former all the religious privileges of the latter. There soon followed a great relaxing of the rules by which the Church had been wont to “fence the tables,” and baptized members were admitted to the communion without evidence of any spiritual change, with the thought and hope that access to the sacrament would be of gracious influence. Thus was constituted the “Half-Way Covenant,” which really for the satisfaction of a political need, brought into full Church relationship multitudes who were strangers to vital spiritual experience; and which abode in its strength until, in the next century, Edwards shattered its power and prepared the way for the Great Awakening.

It is not to be understood, however, that all the religious leaders of the day were consenting to this action. The synod, as in duty bound, reported its action to the general court, which body, in the fall session of 1662, enacted as follows “The Court, having read over the result of the synod, judge meet to recommend the same to the consideration of all the Churches and people of the jurisdiction, and for this end do order the printing thereof.”²

Thereupon arose great controversy. The leaders of the opposition were President Chauncey of Harvard, John Davenport of New Haven, and Increase Mather. These were answered by Allen of Dedham, Richard Mather of Dorchester, and Mitchell of Cambridge, whom Cotton Mather called “the matchless Mitchell.” The contest lasted for many years, but the result was that the principle of the synodical deliverance was adopted by the majority of the Churches, while the logical widening of the suffrage was confirmed by the state in the law of 1664, to be hereafter noted. The second synod of Boston, called in 1676, suggested no departure from this broader rule. Its attention was chiefly directed to “the dangers to New England liberty” arising from the quo warranto proceedings in England against the Colony Charter, and at the same time to the Confession of Faith. It is to be noted that its decision, confirmatory of the previous adoption of time Westminster symbol, lacked authority until ratified by the general court.¹

Meanwhile that the dissension was proceeding which issued in the first Boston synod, there came to the Massachusetts rulers a sharp spasm of alarm and cruelty. As we look back upon it, the alarm seems utterly absurd and the cruelty without excuse. Though the faculty of “putting oneself in another’s place” enables the judicial mind to look upon the Quaker episode with less sternness of condemnation than such action would demand to-day, yet the children of the Puritans cannot read the story with much patience for their fathers.

In 1647 George Fox began in England his remarkable career. Believing that the work of the Reformation had not gone far enough, he undertook to restore the purity of primitive Christianity. Teaching the doctrine of the Inward Light of the Holy Spirit in man, he would dispense with priest and presbyter and all distinctions between clergy and laity. The taught that tithes were unlawful, that

oaths were sinful, and that non-resistance was a Christian duty. No person could without sin engage in any military service. The enthusiasm and personal character of Fox drew to him many followers, whose doctrines immediately aroused the hostility of the authorities and subjected “the pestilent sect of Quakers” to all manner of persecution, short of death itself.

At the same time — the seething years of the English Commonwealth were proclaimed the fanatical vagaries of the Fifth Monarchy men, and of the Mugglestonians, whose wild deliverances were in the common apprehension confused with the teachings of Fox. All were classed together. Hence it was that the reports brought to New England of these new religious teachings made no proper distinctions, while at the same time they excited the fears of the Puritans that the “dangerous heresy” might be brought to their people. Moved by that fear, before any of the sectaries had entered the country, the general court in 1654 ordered,¹ that all persons having copies of the books of John Reeves and Ludowick Muggleton, “who pretend to be the two last witnesses and prophets of Jesus Christ, full of blasphemies,” should bring or send them to the magistrates, on pain of £10 fine for failure.

This seems to have been regarded as something of a challenge, accepted first by two Quaker women, Mary Fisher and Ann Austin, who came to Boston from Barbadoes in July of 1656. In a few weeks they were followed by nine others; and the whole company, under the impression that God required them to bear witness against the errors of Church and State, proceeded at once to make themselves as offensive as possible to the ministers and magistrates. They were promptly arrested, and being asked by the court, “How they would make it appear that God sent them? after a pause they answered, that they had the same call that Abram had to go out of his country.” They were sent to prison and their

books were burned. While the governor was passing the jail, Mary Prince called to him from the window: “Woe unto thee! Thou art an oppressor!” The governor sent for her twice and reasoned with her, and two ministers who were present treated her kindly, “to which she returned the grossest railings, reproaching them as hirelings, deceivers of the people, Baal’s priests, seed of the serpent, brood of Ishmael, and the like.”¹

This is a fair sample of the conduct of these unwelcome guests, whose behavior was as madness itself compared to the gentle, charitable, and peace-loving Friends of a later day. Their spirit was a frenzy, for which the only proper place was Bedlam. The thought of opposition to their doctrine, the idea of a paid ministry and of other institutions of the civil and religious state, fired them to a strange and ungovernable rage, in which, while they preached against physical resistance, they made of their tongues weapons harder to bear than clubs. Instead of preaching the gospel of peace they degenerated into brawlers and common scolds. There was no official dignity that they did not revile; no sense of social decorum that they did not outrage.² One of the women stripped herself naked and walked through the aisles of a crowded meeting-house, and another through the town of Salem, in order to testify against the indecency of the magistrates in whipping women on the bare back. In proportion as they met any opposition their behavior grew more frantic. And, of course, their claim in all was of a divine mission. Stevenson declared that in Shipton, Yorkshire, as he was ploughing, he heard a voice, saying, “I have Ordained thee to be a prophet to the nations.”

The first comers of the sect to Massachusetts may justly be called “avowed firebrands,” not intending permanent settlement, but with the deliberate design of antagonizing the religious and civil institutions of the colony, a design

formed and entered upon in a thoroughly quarrelsome spirit. This was doubtless increased in its bitterness by the repressive measures immediately adopted by the magistrates; but, making all allowance for that influence, the spirit of these New England Quakers was much more pugnacious and ungovernable than was that of their brethren in other colonies. Even the tolerant Roger Williams wrote of them: “They are insufferably proud and contemptuous. I have, therefore, publicly declared myself that a due and moderate restraint and punishment of their incivilities, though pretending conscience, is so far from persecution, properly so called, that it is a duty and command of God.”¹

The effect of such an irruption into the colony was that of great alarm. A nearly hysterical fright took possession of the magistrates, as though they saw reason to apprehend that, unless the severest measures were used, the entire community would be demoralized. It is to be noted that all the actions of the magistrates were predicated on the heretical character of the Quakers’ doctrine. While much of the inflictions visited upon its teachers would be equalled in any police court of to-day for like disorderly conduct, the chief though and purpose then was, not to punish turbulent behavior, but to suppress heresy. The legislation against the new sect constantly defines, “a cursed sect of hereticks which are commonly called Quakers,” and their doctrine as “a pestilent Heresy.” At the October session of the general court in 1656 began a series of laws against them, growing more and more severe and culminating, two years after, in the doom of death on persistent return after banishment.²

Under these statutes Quakers, coming into the colony, and before the commission of any offence besides that of coming, were to be thrown into jail, whipped with twenty stripes, and kept at work until transported or banished. Shipmasters bringing any of the sect were to be fined £100. Any person

entertaining, encouraging, or concealing Quakers was to be fined forty shillings “for each hour of entertainment.” For the poor sectaries themselves, to were added whipping, mutilation, banishment, and death. The doom of death “barely secured enactment by a majority of one,” and this only because of the illness of a deputy from Dorchester.¹

The authorities of Massachusetts urged other colonies to take similar action, but none of them, while fining Quakers and their helpers, adopted such severe measures as those of Massachusetts. The reply of Rhode Island to the application from Boston contained a telling comment on the spirit of the sect, to the effect that in the absence of repressive laws the Quakers did not wish to remain or make many converts in Rhode Island.² “But we intend,” wrote Arnold, “to commend consideration of their extravagant outgoings to the general assembly.”³

The commissioners of the Confederacy responded to the desire of Massachusetts by recommending to the several colonies that the Quakers be banished, on pain of suffering severe punishment for return and death for a second return. This recommendation was signed by the younger Winthrop, of Connecticut, very reluctantly; and he appended to his signature the words, “Looking at the last as a query and not an Act, I subscribe.” Winthrop said that he would go on his knees to the magistrates to arrest execution.

There were four Quakers executed in Massachusetts: William Robinson, Marmaduke Stevenson, Mary Dyer, and William Leddra. Mary Dyer was the wife of William Dyer, the secretary of Rhode Island, who wrote a most pathetic letter to the magistrates at Boston, on receipt of which they released the woman, banishing and committing her to the custody of her husband. The secretary, however, proved powerless to shield his wife from the consequences of her

fanatical folly. In a short time the infatuated woman returned to Boston, saying that she had “felt liberty” to go to Rhode Island, but was under a “religious restraint to come back.” She denied our law, came to bear witness against it, and could not choose but come and do as formerly.”¹

Stevenson and Robinson had both been previously banished, and returning to Boston declared that they had “come to offer their lives.” Robinson, on banishment from Massachusetts, had gone to Virginia, and there spent six months in prison. Hearing of the capital punishment enacted in the Bay, “he felt that time Lord had laid the burden” on him to put the law to trial in his own person. He wrote to Fox and Roff in England: “I came with my companion, Marmaduke Stevenson, to Boston, in obedience to the Lord, to beare our testimony against there Bloody Law, which they have made. The Lord laid on me, my Life to give up, Boston’s Bloody Lawes to try.”²

These executions took place in 1659. By them the already smouldering disapproval of the people for the severity of the magistrates was fanned into a flame, and the magistrates soon learned that the population at large, though having no sympathy with the Quaker views, were outraged by the inhumanity of the laws against the sect. No more executions were allowed by this rising public sentiment. Even less inflictions were condemned by it, and, one Brend having been whipped unmercifully, the people protested so effectively that the jailer very narrowly escaped punishment for his cruelty.³ In consequence this feeling among the people those imprisoned were released, and the general court in 1661 suspended time capital clause of the law. This was a practical repeal.⁴ But the court was not ready to concede

liberty to the “cursed sect.” In 1662 it reënacted the law for the whipping of Quakers: and as late as 1675 a law was passed imposing a fine of £5 on any person found at a Quaker meeting. This was a dead letter at its enactment — a last and despairing fling of already impotent bigotry. By this time there were many Quakers in the colony. “After these first excursions they became an orderly people, submitting to the laws, except such as relate to the militia and support of the ministry.”¹ At Salem they were permitted to build their first meeting-house in peace.

The credit of the relief afforded to the Quakers has usually been supposed due to orders from the king, but a comparing of dates shows that the indignant protests of the people anticipated the royal command.

Soon after the Restoration in England, Edward Burroughs complained to Charles of the cruelties suffered by his brethren in Massachusetts, and the king issued an order to “forbear to proceed any further, but send such persons to England, with the respective crimes or offences much to their charge.”² John Colman of London wrote to his brother, Rev. Dr. Colman of Boston: “The Quakers’ complaint hath been heard (by the Privy Council), and the persons who were imprisoned are ordered to be set at liberty. I hear that at the hearing the Attorney General reflected on the country very sharply, and said that was not the only instance in which they had assumed to themselves unwarranted powers.”³

The general court, having already relaxed its severity, replied to the king in an attempt to justify the past actions “Concerning the Quakers, open and capital blasphemers, open seducers, open enemies to the government, malignant and assiduous promoters of doctrines directly tending to subvert both our Church and State. . . their willingly

rushing themselves thereupon (the sword of the law) was their own act, we with all humility conceive a crime bringing their blood upon their own head. . . . Had they but promised to depart the jurisdiction and not return, we should have been glad of such an opportunity that they should not die.”¹ Again, the court wrote to the lord chamberlain an apologetic letter, in which hatred, shame, and fear are alike heard. “In respect,” it reads, “of those pestilent hereticks, the Quakers, who have lately obtained his Majesty’s letter requiring us to forbear their punishment; in observance whereof we have suspended execution of our laws against them respecting death or corporal punishment; but this indulgence they do abuse to insolency and seduction of our people, and unless his Majesty strengthen our hands this hopeful plantation is likely in all probability to be destroyed!” At the same time, 1661, the court wrote to Lord Say and Sele of “the Quakers risen up against us, accusing us to his Majesty and intruding themselves upon us, whose work it is to dissemble their cursed principles, and in a tumultuous and rude manner reproaching all established order, as well civil as ecclesiastical, acting a part as commissionated from hell to ruin the poor Churches and people of God here.”²

Any judgment upon this lamentable story must regard this alarmed mind of the authorities. There can be no doubt that they seriously entertained a fear that tolerance of the pestilent sect would result in ruin to both commonwealth and Church. To us such fear is the extreme of absurdity, but to them it was real and solemn. This fear was intensified into horror by the Quaker extravagance in action and speech. It could hardly be expected that a Puritan of the day would allow the painting of such portraits as the Quaker put into the following words: “A man that hath a covetous and deceitful rotten heart; lying lips which abound among them, and a

smooth, fawning, flattering tongue, and short hair, and a deadly enmity against those that are called Quakers and others that oppose their wrongs; such a hypocrite is a fit man to be a member of any New England Church.”¹

It is impossible, in seeking palliation for the cruelty of the government, to go the length of Dr. Joel Parker,² who, almost justifying all its inflictions, argues that the Puritans did not persecute or harass the Quakers, but the latter harassed the former, while the Puritans imposed penalties for the violation of law. The argument is sophistical, for part of the law violated was a limitation on conscience and worship, the spirit of which was persecution. The history also shows that the first Quakers in Boston were arrested immediately on arrival, so soon as it was known that they belonged to the “pestilent sect.” At that time the only harassment, of which they had been guilty, was their mere presence in the town. It may be said also that such a greeting was enough to stir up the bitterness of such fanatics, and that, had the magistrates shown a greater forbearance at the beginning of the business, its issue would not have been so sad and disgraceful.

The most that can be said for the magistrates is that their unreasonable fear destroyed their clearness of judgment. On their own statements, while they sought to check disorderly conduct, yet all their inflictions on the Quakers were in the

name of religion and for the safety of their Church. They did not wish to take life, and greatly preferred that the heretics would be content to remain away from the colony. We desire their lives absent, rather than their deaths present.” “For the security of the flock,” said Norton, “we pen up the wolf; but a door is purposely left open, whereby he may depart at his pleasure.”¹ Beyond doubt, the decree of death was enacted in terrorem, to frighten away the heretics, and we may easily believe that not a member of the general court, at the time of its adoption, considered it possible that an execution under it would occur. When the banished four returned, “those bloody laws to try,” the magistrates were not quick to inflict the fatal penalty. This they might have done under a strict construction of the law, death was the doom of return, without remedy or appeal. But the magistrates besought the culprits to go, and only on their persistent refusal resorted to the extreme. And yet, while it can thus be clearly shown that they did not desire to take life, yet the issue as clearly declares that they were willing to take life for opinion’s sake, rather than suffer the flock “to be exposed to the ‘pernicious heresy’ of the Quaker ‘wolf.’”

This violent dealing, as before hinted, did not accomplish its design. The reaction was powerful on the theocracy itself. Puritanism and Religious Liberty, under the guise of Quakerism, met in a death grapple, and, though four Quakers went to the gallows, the real victory was with the “cursed sect” and the true principles they professed. The revulsion in popular feeling added an indignant bitterness to the sense of the oppressions suffered by many dissenters, such as Childs and Clarke, and to the sense of exclusion from the rights of freemen on the part of many of the people. All these things were seen to be of one pattern, the pattern of an exclusive religionism, to which must be moulded everything civil and religious. From this revelation a large part of the people

revolted, and from the death of Leddra the days of the theocracy were numbered. In several forms of institution it yet lasted for one hundred and fifty years, but it took its real death blow from its persecution of the Quakers.¹ After this fatal work, though it indulged at times in the utterance of imperial language,² like the law of 1697 against Blasphemy, it yet steadily weakened, until there remained only certain forms of administration, retained rather for convenience than from any estimate of sacred quality in them. The men of the next generation were heartily ashamed of the Quaker episode. Thus Cotton Mather:³ “If any man will appear in vindication of it, let him do as he pleases. For my part, I will not. The same man, in 1718, gave a broader expression to regret for the errors of the fathers, marking the happy growth of religious freedom. The occasion was an ordination of pastor in the Baptist Church of Boston, a service in which the three Congregational pastors of the city took part. Cotton Mather preached the sermon and, speaking of religious persecutions, said: “Good men, alas have done such things as these. New England also has in former times done something of this aspect, which would not now be so well approved: in which, if the brethren, in whose house we are now convened, met with anything too unbrotherly, they now with satisfaction hear us expressing our dislike of everything which looked like persecution in the days that have passed over us.”⁴

At the same time that King Charles interfered for the relief of the Quakers, he bethought him of two other classes of men in Massachusetts whose wrongs needed redress. There were freeborn Englishmen in the colony denied the suffrage,⁵ and there were men of the Church of England

forbidden to worship according to their conscience. In regard to the latter there was a correspondence of special interest, illustrative of the dogged determination of Massachusetts to allow no departure from the established order.¹ In 1662 the king wrote to the colonial legislature, demanding that liberty of Episcopal worship he granted, and that individual Episcopalians be admitted to the Lord’s Supper in the Congregational Churches and be afforded the baptism of their children. The reply of the general court recounts the causes of the Puritan departure from England. “We could not live,” they say, “without the public worship of God, nor were permitted the public worship without such a yoke of submission and conformities as we could not consent unto without sin. That we might, therefore, enjoy divine worship without human mixtures, without offence to God, man, or our own consciences, with leave, but not without terms, we departed from our country, kindred, and father’s houses into this Patmos. . . . The Congregational way is it, wherein we desire our orthodox brethren would bear with us.”

The king was not satisfied by this reply and in 1664 sent over Colonel Richard Nichols — an incident of whose coming was the capture of New Amsterdam — and Sir Robert Cane, joining with them George Cartwright and Samuel Maverick as commissioners to visit the colonies and regulate these affairs. Their instructions as to Massachusetts² repeat the order, “that such who desire to use the Book of Common Prayer may be permitted so to doe without incurring any penalty, reproach, or disadvantage in his interests;” and then proceed, “it being very scandalous that any man should be debarred the exercise of his religion, according to ye laws and customs of England, by those who by ye indulgence

granted have liberty left to be of what profession in religion they please. . . . Differences of opinion doe not lessen charity to each other, since charity is fundamental in all religion.”

Private instructions charged the commissioners, “to be very careful that nothing be said or done, from or which the people may thinke or imagine that there is any purpose in us to make any alteration in the Church Government, or to introduce any other forme of worshipp among them than that they have chosen; all our exception in that particular being that they doe in truth deny that liberty of conscience to each other.” In order to conciliate and avoid suspicion, the commissioners were advised “to frequent their (the colonists) Churches and to be present at their devotions,” but also, “that you carry with you some learned and discreet chaplaine, who in your own families will reade the Book of Common prayer and performe your devotion according to the forme established in the Church of England, excepting only in wearing the surplesse, which, haveing never bin seen in those countryes, may conveniently be forborne att this tyme.”

Cartwright, in letters from Boston, wrote to Nichols: “They have admitted for freemen three or four men who are not members of the Church, that by it they might evade the King’s letter in that poynt. . . . Their private soliciting for voyces against the next election, give me just cause for being jealous of their loyalty.” . . . “Here we find the great probability of obstruction. . . . I doe think it will be better to beginne at Connecticote. If we have good successe there, it will be a strong inducement to these to submitt also.”

The commissioners reported to the English secretary of state, with evident bitterness of disappointment: — “Those who have declared themselves loyall are very much threatened and in great feare, and have earnestly prest us to sollicit His Majestie for their speedy defence and safety. . . . We

desire you to acquaint His Majestie with their desires in this, as also of haveing their children baptized and themselves admitted to the Lord’s Supper. . . . They did imprison and barbarously use Mr. Jourdain for baptizing children. . . . Those whom they will not admit to the Communion, they compell to come to their sermons by forcing from them five shillings for every neglect: yet these men thought their own paying of one shilling for not coming to prayers in England was an insupportable tyranny. They have put many Quakers to death. . . . They yet pray constantly for their persecuted brethren in England.”

There certainly was small disposition in the Boston authorities to satisfy the king and his commissioners, and when in 1665 the latter returned to the charge, demanding liberty of Episcopal worship, they received for answer from the general court: “Concerning the use of the common prayer book and ecclesiastical privileges, our humble addresses to his majesty have fully declared our main ends in our being voluntary exiles from our dear native country, which we had not chosen at so dear a rate, could we have seen the word of God warranting us to perform our devotions in that way; and to have the same set up here, we conceive it is apparent that it will disturb our peace in our present enjoyments; and we have commended to the ministry and people here the word of the Lord for their rule therein.”

This was a sufficiently explicit refusal, and nothing was left to the commissioners but the pleasure of a satirical reply. “We are heartily sorry,” they wrote, “to find that by some evil persuasions you have put a greater value upon your own conceptions than upon the wisdom of his majesty and council. . . . The end of the first planters coming hither, as expressed in their address, was the enjoyment of the liberty of their own consciences. . . . We admire, therefore, that you should deny the liberty of conscience to any, and that upon a vain conceit of your own that it will disturb your enjoyments, which the king often hath said it shall not.

We have great reason both to think and say, that the King and his Council and the Church of England understands and follows the rules in God’s word as much as this corporation. . . . His majesty does not impose the use of the common prayer book on any, but he understands that liberty of conscience comprehends every man’s conscience as well as any.” The weight of argument was undoubtedly with the king; and it makes an edifying spectacle to see Charles thus striving for liberty of conscience in Massachusetts at the same time in winch he was shooting Covenanters in Scotland. The fact was that his principle of religious liberty was identical with that of the Puritans, a liberty for one’s own sect alone. On such ground only he interfered for Episcopalians in New England, while he cared nothing for the non-conformists in old England, nor remonstrated with Virginia for persecuting the Puritans. His arguments and demands were futile to move the men of Massachusetts. Episcopacy remained religio illicita in. the colony, until, more than twenty years afterward, Governor Andros forced the issue, seizing a Church and holding a service with a military guard.

The king’s demand touching the franchise met a far more acquiescent mood in the general court. The matter had, indeed, been practically settled in the issue of the Boston synod, but the court, as though to satisfy the king and also to legalize the popular conclusions from the synod, in 1665 enacted the new law of the franchise, substantially as follows:¹ “All Englishmen,” presenting the certificates of the ministers of the places where they dwell that they are orthodox and not vicious or scandalous in conduct, and also certificates from the selectmen that they are freeholders; or who are in full communion with “some Church among us,” and are twenty-four years of age may “present their desires to this court, and have such their desire propounded and put to vote in the general court, to (be admitted to) the freedom of the body politick, by the suffrage of the major part.”

This was a great step forward in the cause of liberty, and though the terms of the law put every several application at the discretion of the general court, it does not appear that such discretion was ever oppressively exercised. With whatever regret the court may have voted the change, they recognized that the popular mind had registered beyond repeal the relaxing of theocratic restrictions. In 1681 the court, in a letter to the king, construes this law as a repeal of the old statute, and denies that now only Church members are admitted freemen. But they conclude their statement with the plaintive sentence, “We humbly conceive it is our liberty by charter to choose whom we will admit into our own company.”¹

The opponents to the theocracy had thus scored two victories, in this widening of the franchise and in the general condemnation of the treatment of the Quakers. Immediately thereafter the Baptists,² the sect of Clarke and Holmes, renewed their efforts, and more successfully, for freedom of worship. They were growing in number steadily. In Plymouth colony the town of Swanzey was settled by Baptist refugees from Massachusetts, and drew no hostile regards from the colonial authorities.³ In 1665, the general court of Massachusetts, rendered uneasy by the increase of the sect and of their services, cited a number of them to answer for schism. On their refusal to give up their services, they were sentenced to disfranchisement and prison. After several months’ detention they were released on payment of fines; and a public meeting was called for discussion and instruction, which the Baptists were required to attend!⁴ These were probably the same men whom Hutchinson mentioned by name: Thomas Goold, Thomas Osburne, and John George, who were persecuted for absenting themselves from the established

Church in Boston! This was in the theocratic stronghold, and showed how bold the new sect had grown.

The action of the court caused much popular agitation and outspoken dissent, and the court was too weak to enforce its will. The issue of the Quaker episode stood as an ominous warning The Baptists remained in Boston and built their Church. In 1668 the general court attempted to retrieve the lost ground and after describing the “obstinate and turbulent Anabaptists,” who count “infant baptism a nullity,” sentenced the sect to banishment.

But the law was an idle word, which the court did not dare to enforce. The Baptists had come to stay, and to share with the Quakers the honor of securing liberty of conscience and of worship in Puritan Massachusetts. Though in many ways it was apparent that dissenters from the established order were unwelcome guests, yet we hear no more of fines, whippings, imprisonment, or exile for an alien religious worship.

The union of Church and State, however, was not thereby dissolved. While it thus lost a large measure of its exclusiveness, it continued to affect much action and legislation. This was indicated by the calling of the synod of 1676, whose advice in the perilous crisis of that time, when the king threatened the revocation of the charter, was particularly desired by the general court.¹ It continued to express itself in what remained for a century its chief concern, the public support of the Church, sundry details of which will presently be noted.

The royal movement against the charter occasioned immense agitation in the colony, not only as threatening the foundation of its liberties, but also entailing unavoidable changes in the religious attitude of the state, changes which simply carried on and widened the results of the Quaker and Baptist incidents. The charter was revoked by the king in council, in 1685, and Andros, the first royal governor in Massachusetts, brought with him instructions as to religious matters

in the several colonies grouped under his short-lived sway. The will of the king was communicated to the people in proclamation: “We do here will and require and command that liberty of conscience be allowed to all persons, and that such especially as shall be conformable to the rites of the Church of England be particularly countenanced and encouraged.”¹

All the evidence attainable suggests that there were many Episcopalians in the colony, whose complaints of their uncomfortable surroundings, their beloved service denied them and their prayer book closed, were continually being laid before the king.²

With the coming of Andros the issue was forced, and that liberty, which had been obtained by themselves for the Quakers and Baptists, was now extorted for the Episcopalians by the strong hand of the royal power. The struggle began with the governors demand for a Church building, in which services might be held according to the order of the Church of England. The use of the building (the Old South Church) was refused. Judge Sewall records:³ “A meeting at Mr. Allen’s of the Ministers and four of each congregation to consider what answer to give the Governor, and it was agreed that we

could not with a good conscience consent that our Meeting Houses should be made use of for the Common Prayer Worship.” It was intimated to Andros that such use of the Town House will not be refused, and Sewall notes on the following Christmas day: “The Governor goes to the Town House to service, Forenoon and Afternoon, and Red-Coat going on his right hand and Captain George on his left.”

The governor, however, did not propose to rest satisfied with such indirect recognition of Episcopal rights, and what he could not obtain through open means he reached by secret. Determined that the prayer book should find entrance into a religious building of time town, he prevailed on the sexton, either by threat or bribe, to open the Church. Thither, with his staff and sympathizers among the people, he repaired on a Sunday, in full state, for the first full service of the Church of England in Massachusetts.

This triumph of Andros broke the spirit of the opposition, which consented to an arrangement admitting the Episcopal service on the Sunday afternoons. Meanwhile steps were at once taken toward building an Episcopal Church. Land being desired for that purpose, it was at first refused. Sewall writes that he “would not set up that which the people came from England to avoid.” A lot was soon obtained and King’s Chapel erected before Andros left the government.

Encouraged by this success the governor ventured yet another attempt, to place the support of the Episcopal Church and minister on the public charge.¹ Edmund Randolph, one of the king’s commissioners, wrote to the archbishop of Canterbury:² “We have often moved for an honorable maintenance for our minister, but they tell us, those that hire him must maintain him, as they maintain their own minister, by contributions. . . . I humbly represent to your Grace that the three meeting houses in Boston might pay twenty shillings a week a piece, out of their contributions, towards defraying our Church charges.” The cool impudence of

this closing proposition is like the quiet assumption of the Church of England men in other colonies, notably in New York, that a lodgment by sufferance immediately elevated the English Church into authority and conferred a right to everything in sight. The people of Boston, of course, could not agree with Randolph and Andros. Sewall wrote, “The bishops would have thought it strange to have been asked to contribute towards setting up New England Churches.” What made the demand also the more preposterous to the Boston mind was the fact, to which Randolph alludes, that the Boston Churches were exceptional among the Churches of the Colony, in that their expenses were met by voluntary contributions and not by public tax.¹ Despite the governor and Randolph the Episcopal Church of Boston was forced to provide for its own treasury.

Another small cause of friction is related in another letter of Randolph to his grace of Canterbury.² The Episcopalians had requested the members of the old Church to let their clerk toll the bell, “for us to meet to go to prayers. Their men told me, in excuse for not doing it, that they had considered and found it intrenched on their liberty of conscience, granted them by his Majesty’s present commission, and could in no wise consent to it!” Notwithstanding such small contentions, the soreness of feeling on the part of the Puritan element soon passed away, and it is pleasing to read that, twenty years after, the Boston town-meeting gave additional land to the Church of England, in order to enlarge its building.³ With this was perfected the emancipation in Massachusetts of that form of religion, which the Puritan conscience had learned to look upon as only a little worse than popery.

In 1687 was published the proclamation of religious liberty, designed by James to remove Catholic disabilities. It was received in the colony⁴ with various sentiments. Thomas

Danforth, an ex-deputy governor, writes suspiciously: “I more dread the consequences thereof than the execution of those penal laws, the only wall against popery, that are now designed to be cashiered. We may without breach of charity conclude the Popish Counsels are laid.”¹ Under date of August 25, 1687, Sewall records: “Mr. Mather preaches from the 5th verse of Jude. He praised God for the Liberty good people enjoy in England — said, “‘tis marvelous in our eyes.” He also relates that Increase Mather proposed a day of thanksgiving, and that Andros forbade an altogether new experience for the Massachusetts Puritan, whose religious exercises and appointments had hitherto been entirely at his own discretion. Mather also proposed a congratulatory address to the king from the ministers. This he effected, and himself presented the address to James, who received him graciously, and said, “I hope by a Parliament to obtain a Magna Charta for Liberty of Conscience.”²

This hope of James was never accomplished, and he was soon in a position to obtain nothing from a parliament. William, his successor, issued the new charter of Massachusetts, in 1691, by which Plymouth was merged in the larger colony, and it was decreed that “forever hereafter there shall be liberty of conscience allowed, in the worship of God to all Christians (except Papists).”³ The enlarged colony was made a royal province, with a governor appointed by the crown, and the king’s veto on any legislation. All religious restriction on suffrage was removed. This constituted a crippling blow to the Puritan oligarchy, but it marked a decided advance in the cause of liberty. “The freedom of the inhabitants was almost universal,”⁴ while all bands upon conscience and worship, except for Roman Catholics, were entirely removed. The liberty of every Protestant sect was

fixed in the fundamental law, and no longer was it the case as in the past, that each should conquer toleration for itself. “We hear no more of the theocracy, where God was alone supreme lawgiver and king.”¹

What remained of the hallowed union of Church and State was found in the public support of time Congregational Church. This institution of tithes, assessed by the civil officer as a public tax, continued until lung after time Revolution and not until 1833 did it cease in Massachusetts. There was a deeply rooted conviction that only through such tax could the minister be supported. Cotton. Mather, untaught by the experience of the Boston Churches from the beginning, or perhaps thinking only of the country Churches, wrote “Ministers of the Gospel would have a poor time of it, if they must rely on the free contributions of the people for their maintenance. The laws of the province are the king’s laws, the minister is the king’s minister, the salary is raised in the king’s name and is the king’s allowance unto him.”²

In the interest of this tax for Church support the legislature of the province took action at various times to both continue the tax and to remove time objections of those not of the established Church. Of course, the tax itself was general on the entire population, and every taxpayer was compelled thereby to help in the support of religious worship. Those who had no Church affiliations at all were thus taxed for the support of the Congregational Church. Such indeed was the case with everybody until 1727, when the “Five-Mile Act,” similar to one already obtaining in Connecticut, provided that the taxes collected from Episcopalians should be given to their own Episcopal minister, if there was one within five miles, whose services they attend.” This was devised for the relief of Episcopalians, but the logical effect of it was to put the Episcopal Church into the

establishment, as supported by public money.¹ In 1728 the benefit of this act was extended to the Baptists and Quakers; and since the Quakers were opposed on principle to a “paid ministry,” in 1731 they were wholly exempted from Church rates. This exemption, for some unexplained reason, was in 1734 extended to “Anabaptists.” Again in 1735 and 1742 the Five-Mile Act, with extensions of privilege, was repassed for the benefit of the Episcopalians.

The Great Awakening of 1741 came as a disturber of the quiet order of the Churches. It was not only a quickening of the religious life, but a protest against the low views of requirements for Church membership introduced by the Half-Way Covenant, to which the great majority of the Churches had fallen victims. It was attended by much excitement and many intrusions into parishes by unauthorized ministers, to the great offence of many of the established clergy.² A result of the revival was seen in the secession of members from the regular Churches, who organized Churches of their own, and for that reason were called Separates. They desired, but could not obtain, as such, exemption from taxation to support the established Church, and in order to reach their purpose many of the new Churches organized as nominal Baptists, to obtain the benefit of the Act of 1734. To meet this evasion the legislature in 1752 passed the only act which has reference to the awakening. This provided that, “No person shall be esteemed to be an Anabaptist, except such as produce a certificate from the minister and two principal members of the Baptist Church; “and that the certifying minister must produce a certificate from three other Baptist Churches in this, or neighboring provinces, that the minister and his Church are in Baptist fellowship.”

The most curious incident in the provincial period exhibits a fruitless effort by the ministers, in 1725, to obtain a synod,

“to recover and establish the faith and order of the gospel.” This desire, true to the old institution which subjected the Church to the civil power, was by the hand of Cotton Mather submitted to the legislature. There it caused trouble. The council assented, but the house hesitated and postponed decision for a year, to give “opportunity for instructions from the people.” During the year news of the movement reached England and excited the opposition of the bishop of London, who seems to have taken for granted that there was some plot against the newly enfranchised Episcopalians. Through his influence the king’s government reprimanded both the legislature and the ministers, and forbade the synod, “as a bad precedent for dissenters.”¹

No event of the time could more strikingly illustrate the change of conditions. While the clergy by their application to the legislature remained faithful to the principle of the theocracy, the hesitation of that body was evidence of weakening regard for the principle on the civil side. At the same time, the quiet submission of both legislature and clergy to the uncalled-for interference of the bishop of London and the peremptory orders of the king, in a matter which really concerned neither of them, is another token of lost vigor in the Puritan attitude. We cannot conceive of the clergy or general court consenting to any such dictation, fifty years before. Still another feature of the incident is the repetition of the assumption that the English Church had acquired superior place in the colony. In the English view, the allowance of one Episcopal Church in Boston turned the established Church of Massachusetts into a congregation of dissenters!

To men of our day it seems strange that the clergy failed to insist upon their desire, or to hold their synod without the permission of the civil power. All accounts agree that there was great need of some influence to counteract the prevailing religious indifference of the time. But for this failure two reasons obtained. One, already hinted, was that relic of the

theocracy which made the magistrate’s summons the only warrant for a Church synod. The Church as yet had not come to an understanding of its own natural autonomy. The other, and as powerful, reason was the loss of prestige and power suffered by the ministers as a class. They no longer possessed that wide influence and authority, which in previous generations had made them almost the virtual rulers of the commonwealth. This fact was due, partly to the growing consciousness that theocratic institutions were not fitted to modern life; partly to the increasing numbers of those people who acknowledged no Church bonds; and partly, perhaps chiefly, to the course pursued by the ministers themselves in certain past crises.

Cotton Mather, writing of a former condition which he would admire to have renewed in his own time, said “New England being a country whose interests are remarkably in-wrapped in ecclesiastical circumstances, ministers ought to concern themselves in politics.”¹ In the early day this ministerial concern in politics was so intimate and influential that the voice of the clergy was often the most powerful in the community, at times even coercing magistrates and courts to its dictation. But the power was abused and on occasion became the instrument of cruel bigotry and superstition. Every case of religious persecution was laid at the door of the clergy, and many times justly. They were held chiefly accountable for the severer inflictions, for the whipping of Holmes and the hanging of Quakers.² ‘When in the frenzied crusade against the Salem witches the ministers were found pitiless, urging on the magistrates who had begun to feel compassion, the popular sentiment of humanity was outraged, and the revolt against the spiritual authority of the ministerial order became wide and permanent.³

The ministers never recovered from this self-dealt blow, and thereafter what a minister said and did was estimated at its intrinsic value, and not endowed with superior influence and authority by reason of his office.¹

Thus was completed the breaking down of the religious commonwealth in Massachusetts, and the state made ready for that complete severance from the Church which, both as an incident and consequent, accompanied the Revolution and National Independence.

The founding of Connecticut was a protest against the ecclesiasticism of Massachusetts.² Though the younger colony insisted on the power and duty of the magistrate to care for religion and the Church, it never attempted to set up a theocracy, and never conditioned civil and political privileges upon personal relation to the Church, save as respected the one office of governor.

The first movements of foundation were under the lead of the younger Winthrop and Hooker, though each acted quite distinctly from the other, and in different parts of the colony that was to be. The former’s first service was of a military character, noted here only because his action brought into existence a name of prominence in the ecclesiastical history of Connecticut.

It needs to be premised that the Dutch at New Amsterdam had already established, though not without objection from

Massachusetts, a fort and trading-post on the Connecticut River at Hartford. To this locality the Puritans of the Bay laid claim, while for the lands lying on Long Island Sound the king had given a patent to Lord Brooke and Lord Say and Sele. In 1634 it came to the knowledge of these patentees that the Dutch Van Twiller was about to send an expedition to strengthen the Dutch hold on the river, and to take possession of its mouth. To meet this effort they fitted out an opposing force, with the aid of the Massachusetts authorities, and put the younger Winthrop in command. He was not a man of military training or of subsequent military life, but on this occasion succeeded as well as could any soldier. Approaching by sea, he reached the mouth of the Connecticut in “the nick of time,” when the ships of Van Twiller were almost in sight. He landed, took possession of the Point on the west side, built a fort, and named the spot “Saybrooke.”¹ So were the Dutch shut out from the heart of New England, and a name was coined which was destined to have large place in the New England Churches. As for Winthrop himself, he returned to Boston. Twenty years after he cast his lot with the new colony of Connecticut, to become for many years its governor, and to guide its fortunes with a sagacity and prudence not far surpassed by the like virtues of his father in the government at the Bay.

About the same time with Winthrop’s expedition, the moral impulses which resulted in the founding of Connecticut were at work in the mind and heart — the broad mind and tenderly Christian heart — of Thomas Hooker. A man of station, education, and refinement, and a sincere Puritan in his dissent from the “irregularities” of the Church of England, he had experienced such persecution at the hands of Laud that he fled to Holland. In 1633 he came to Boston in the ship Griffin, together with John Cotton, and made so favorable an impression on the minds of the people that, very

soon after arrival, he was chosen pastor of the Church at Newtown (Cambridge). Of him, at the time of his death in 1647, the elder Winthrop wrote in his Journal: “Who, for piety, prudence, wisdom, zeal, learning, and what else might make him serviceable in the Place and time he lived in, might be compared with men of greatest note; and he shall need no other praise: the fruits of his labors in both Englands shall preserve an honorable and happy remembrance of him forever.” To Hooker, though for the most part in happy concord with his brethren of the Bay, two features of the Massachusetts policy were ungrateful: its restriction of the suffrage, and its spirit of intolerance toward all difference of opinion. His views on the former point made the great difference between him and Winthrop; for, as to the latter, it is quite clear that, had Winthrop been untrammelled by the narrow prejudices of his associates, the early annals of the colony would have recorded few instances of oppression. Hooker never assented to the rule which made membership in the Church a condition of citizenship. He had no sympathy for the theocratic ideal. To his mind it involved a serious peril to the purity of the Church and gross wrong to a very large portion of the community. Where Winthrop argued for the limited franchise that, “the best part is always the least, and of that best part the wiser part is always the lesser;" hooker answered, “in matters which concern the common good, a general council, chosen by all, to transact businesses which concern all, i conceive most suitable to rule and most safe for relief of the whole.”¹ His was the first voice raised in New England for a pure democracy, and, as the result proved, there were many in early Massachusetts to follow his lead. He had equally positive convictions on the question of toleration for religious differences. Such men as Dudley and Ward were an offence to him. He looked with disapproval on the harsh measures of the general court against Williams

and the Salem Church, and when the Hutchinson controversy committed the authorities to a course of harsh repression and injustice, he concluded to attempt a new foundation, where freedom of mind should have larger scope. This was not because of any agreement with the opinions of Mrs. Hutchinson, but because he held that such opinions were no proper subject for civil action. With him there were many others in entire sympathy, a large proportion of his own flock at Newtown, and the ex-governor, Haynes, who had pronounced the sentence of banishment on Williams, but who, by some influence, — perhaps that of Hooker himself, — had been led to more liberal views.¹ In the height of the antinomian controversy, while Boston was ablaze with excitement, the ministry and court grim with determination to repress heresy, and the great heresiarch still defiant and uncondemned, Hooker, Haynes, and a large company, to the number of over an hundred from Newtown, Watertown, and Dorchester, set forth on their journey through the wilderness to the banks of the Connecticut. They took with them all their belongings, driving before them a large herd of cattle, and after prosperous travel settled Hartford, Windsor, and Wethersfield, bent on the establishment of a new commonwealth, in which religion, liberty, and law should dwell together in friendly union. It is interesting to note that the departure from the Bay was without opposition, and that certain members of the Church of Watertown carried with them letters of dismission to the future Church on the Connecticut, letters formally

approved by the general court of Massachusetts.¹ Probably the thought of the Bay authorities was, that the movement would extend the bounds of their own jurisdiction. Had they understood that the issue was to be another government founded on broader principles than their own, it is not unjust to think that their farewells would have been less complacent.

That the men at the Bay considered the emigration as an expansion of their own colony, and that the emigrants themselves so looked upon it in the beginning, is made reasonably clear by the fact, that the first steps toward forming a separate government were not taken until the party had been nearly two years in their new home. In that period they looked to Boston as the seat of authority, while at the same time constant additions were made to their number. By the spring of 1638 the community contained eight hundred people, and by common consent it was agreed, that the time had come to cut loose from the Bay and form a separate government. So the three towns of Hartford, Windsor, and Wethersfield associated together to form “one Public State or Commonwealth,” to which they gave the name of their beautiful river.² A sermon was preached by Hooker, in which with religious fervor he laid down the principles of a pure democracy. “The foundation of authority,” he said, “is laid in the free consent of the people. The choice of the public magistrates belongs unto the people by God’s own allowance. They, who have power to appoint officers and magistrates, have the right also to set the bounds and limitations of the power and place unto which they call them.”³

With the frame of government instituted by them in the constitution, adopted in January, 1639, — “the first written constitution known to history, creating a government,” our concern here is simply to note its bearing on the questions of religion and the Church. This is very clearly indicated in

the announcement of the duty of the civil government to “mayntayn the liberty and purity of the gospel of our Lord Jesus, as also the discipline of the Churches.” More formally and at length was it declared by the first general court: “Forasmuch as the peace and prosperity of the Churches and the members thereof, as well as Civil rights and Liberties, are carefully to be maintained; It is ordered by this Court and decreed, that the Civil Authority here established hath power and liberty to see that the peace, ordinances, and rules of Christ be observed in every Church according to His word.”¹

Whether this order would prove oppressive or not depended on the spirit of the magistrates. It was sufficiently positive in its assertion of civil control to satisfy even such a man as Dudley. It might be made to cover harsh measures of persecution, or it might find its intended aim in the encouragement of a particular polity and faith, without assuming any hostile attitude toward such as differed from that form. This latter construction was the one in the minds of those who announced that fundamental principle of the new commonwealth, and it marks the distinctive peculiarity of the established Church in Connecticut.

They were a homogeneous people who laid the foundations; all of them of Puritan extraction, and persuaded that the “congregational way” was most in harmony with the word. of God. From this persuasion there were no dissentients at the beginning, and many years passed before people of another mind settled among them, to put their charity to a test. What they might have done, had there been any attempt in the first year, like that of the Brownes at Salem, to introduce the prayer-book service, it is idle to inquire. When, in after years, the men of Connecticut had to meet the Episcopal question, they were ready with an answer of liberality.

Without formal definition or prescription of the form of Church polity, they simply assumed that the form to which they had become attached in Massachusetts, and which they

brought with them, would be the model for the Churches in their new colony. This they established as the State Church, and over it for one hundred and forty years the civil authorities exercised a power, which in its completeness and detail is almost unique in the history of the colonies: a power also be it noted with emphasis — never exercised with harshness or even ungentleness.

This again makes a peculiar feature in the story of the Connecticut Church. The authorities were not on the watch to warn off imaginary invaders. Their ears were not quick to catch the sound of approaching heresy, and they were fully ready to concede the truth that the Christian religion could vitalize other forms of polity and worship than their own. While taking care that Churches of their own order should be founded and maintained, they never decreed the exclusion of other forms of faith and worship. While Massachusetts was banishing Episcopalians, hanging Quakers and jailing Baptists; while New York was witnessing the robbery of Churches for the benefit of a pseudo-Anglican establishment; while Virginia was chasing the Puritans out of her borders; and while these same Puritans were retorting for their wrongs upon the innocent Roman Catholics of Maryland, Connecticut held herself aloof from all repressive measures. The harsh spirit which represses dissent was altogether absent from her founders, notwithstanding the anti-Quaker laws, and we search in vain through her records for a single judicial action, which can fairly be set to the account of religious persecution. Her worst sins against religious liberty were in the exercise of authority over the Church and the assessment upon the entire community for the support of the establishment. In these respects only did her Church laws differ from the full liberty conferred by Williams on Rhode Island, and by Baltimore on Maryland. And even these provisions of law Connecticut, so soon as occasion arose, learned to relax for the relief of dissenting Churches.

The difference just noted was a very broad one in principle. Williams taught that the magistrate in his official station had no power whatever in the Church, that a Church founded and supported by the action of the civil power was an offence to God and man, productive only of confusion and wrong. Hooker held that the care of the Church was the first duty of the magistrate, and that civil laws for the support of a chosen Church were salutary for both Church and State. But he never attempted to blend the two together. He was with Endicott and Winthrop on the broad question of Church establishment; and with Williams in his attitude toward the theocracy. He was with Williams also in hatred of all persecution for opinion, and in holding that the criterion for citizenship should not be the same as for membership in the Church.

The privilege of a freeman was never made in Connecticut a perquisite of religion, nor conditioned on Church membership. For the governor alone was religious profession made a prerequisite for office. “Citizenship was acquired by inhabitancy” (Bancroft), without inquiring as to religious views or Church standing. All the original settlers were freemen, meeting together for their first legislation, the adoption of the constitution, and choice of delegates to the general court. How many of this number were not members of the Church there are no means of telling. Doubtless some of them were such. Afterwards, as the population increased, it was enacted that persons could become freemen only by a general vote of the town.¹ This action was taken in 1643, with clear intent to supply an omission. In 1658 the law defined the conditions of twenty-one years of age and a taxable estate of £30. The law of 1662 further defined that freemen should be “persons of civil, peaceable, and honest conversation,” and reduced the property requirement to £20. No trace is to be found of any attempt to add religious character or Church standing to the conditions for the franchise.

What we note, then, in the story of this colonial establishment is, not the spirit of repression toward variant opinion, but a benevolent and fatherly care and watchfulness over the interests of the Church. The care was intimate, concerning itself with many minor items; the erection of meeting-houses, the calling and support of ministers, the location and boundary of parishes, the composition of any troubles arising in the affairs of any parish. The care was shown also, not only by the enactment of general laws, but by the action of the general court in an endless number of individual cases. Everything touching Church management, any change in Church or in meeting-house, from one end of the commonwealth to the other, was brought to the legislature for its direction or permission. Any wrong suffered by any individual by way of discipline found its echo in the general court. Any disturbance in a Church soon brought the paternal bidding of the court to consider the things which make for peace. To one looking over the colonial records it seems as though there could possibly arise no contingency in Church affairs, which did not appear at some time and some place in Connecticut, and find the general court prompt to examine, to advise, and then, if need be, to command.

In this constant, watchful, all-embracing and paternal care, the ecclesiastical legislation of Connecticut differs from that of all the other colonies. Never used for oppression, it tended directly to build up and strengthen the Churches. The argument for it was very short and simple. The Church was a public charge; its building erected at public expense its minister called by a town-meeting, and the regular support raised by public tax. Over such an institution and arrangement it was considered a thing of necessity that the general government of the colony should extend authority; with this peculiarity, already noted, that it carried its care into smallest details.

Still another feature, easily discernible by even a careless reader of the records, is the high moral purpose of the magistrates

in the exercise of ecclesiastical power. They seem to be always considering the good of the Church and the genuine religious interests of the community. Their zeal for the Church was never a cloak to hide personal ambition or to build up magisterial dignity and authority. They used the state for the real benefit of the Church; never the Church as a mere appendage of the state. In all the strifes of legislation and party, they never lost the high sense of the Church’s divine origin and spiritual nature. In the story of most religious establishments, both in Europe and America, the Church is often exhibited as a mere instrument, degraded to further the schemes of a political party. It was never so seen in Connecticut, save in the strife of disestablishment in 1816-1818. If ever a religious establishment justified itself as proper and good, this colonial Church of Connecticut may be cited as its best exponent.

The story is not punctuated, as is that of Massachusetts, by prosecutions of heretics and jailing of non-conformists. It has thus less of excitement, but it is interesting in the constant exhibition of legislative paternal care. Every session abounded with action in Church matters, sometimes sought for by the people, and frequently originated by the law makers themselves. While it would be useless to recount here the endless detail of such legislation, sundry instances may well be cited as illustrative of the close and minute care over all Church matters.

To begin with the Organization of Churches. This is in the nature of the case an episcopal, presbyterial, or congregational function. Connecticut was singular among the colonial establishments in reserving it to the legislature. The law strictly declared that no Church was to be organized without the consent of the general court;¹ and then, as through fear that the requirement might be construed as having reference Solely to Churches of the established order, the law further

ordained that no “departure or separate form of worship” was to be allowed, without the special permission of the court.¹ Bills for forming new Churches, dividing parishes, and sometimes for uniting them, are of constant occurrence down to the end of the colonial period.

Most of them present nothing more than the routine of a system. Others are of a different sort. Thus, the people of East Hartford prayed for permission to organize a separate Church, alleging as a reason the difficulty of crossing the river to attend service in the Hartford Church; “which difficulty,” the legislative report observed, “they could but foresee before they settled where they are, and therefore is of less wayte with us.” Despite this criticism, the request was granted, “provided, that all lands owned by East Hartford People on the west side pay rates to the west side minister, and that the people on the east side pay to the west side minister until they have a minister of their own.”² The people on the east side of New London were refused permission for a new Church, “there not being clear evidence of agreement among them, nor of their ability to afford a minister honorable maintenance.” On a similar application from East Norwich the general court appointed a committee to visit the locality and lay out the parish, declaring the court’s willingness to grant the petition, “when they shall be arrived to such a capacity as to mayntayne a minister.”³

The Maintenance of the Ministry was a very important subject for legislative action. From the beginning the ministerial salary was an item for public tax, assessed by the selectmen and collected by the constable or other special collector. By the law of 1735,⁴ in order to meet many complaints from ministers, it was ordered that no minister should be kept out of his salary more than two months after the year had expired. If he were kept out, the selectmen were to take

out a warrant directing the constable to levy on the estate of the collector or collectors and pay the minister. If the selectmen should neglect to take out such warrant, they must themselves pay the salary, and also a fine of £5 for each neglect.

The earlier law of 1644, the same with the law of the United Colonies, required that every man should set down what he was willing to pay for the minister; if he refused such subscription, he must be rated by the authorities; if he failed to pay this assessment, the magistrate should collect.¹ Special laws provided for towns with more than one Church, that no inhabitant should fail of paying his proportion, and no minister fail of receiving his stipend.²

In 1711 the Rev. John Jones complained to the general court that the Church at Greenwich had not paid him, whereupon the court ordered “the committee who called John Jones” (naming them) to collect the £20 due and pay the minister, if they should fail, the sheriff was directed to “distrain upon the body or bodies, goods or chattels of any one or more of the said committee,” and pay Mr. Jones.³ There are three separate acts of the legislature to regulate and compel the payment of salary to Mr. Woodward at Norwich.⁴ In 1718 the legislature detached certain portions of the parishes of Middletown and Wethersfield and united them to the Great Swamp Society, forbidding the residents to pay anything to their former ministers, and ordering payment in the new society. The people of West Wethersfield protested against this order, but the lawmakers turned a deaf ear.⁵

Two eases are worthy of note as showing the beginnings of the voluntary system, even within the establishment. One was in 1758, when the first society of New London, in view of there being many people in the parish and of the willingness of the richer brethren “that the poor should have the gospel preached to them freely,” petitioned the legislature

for permission to raise money for Church purposes by assessment on pews, and to appoint from among themselves persons to assess and collect. The prayer was granted by the court.¹ The other case came from Meriden in 1768. Mr. Hubbard, a candidate, was deprived of his license by the association on the ground of unsoundness in faith, but the majority of the Meriden Church insisted on retaining him, though not ordained. The minority complained to the general court, which body ordered, that those who are dissatisfied and who enter their names with the town clerk, may be exempt from tax for the support of Mr. Hubbard. They cannot vote in a meeting of that Church, but can organize and tax themselves for the support of another gospel ministry.²

The Meeting-Houses also furnished the legislature with much care and occasion, at times, for peremptory action. The law made the appointment of the site of the meeting-house a matter for the general court. Such was the custom from the first.³ In 1731 an act defined that any parish (excepting tolerated dissenters), wishing to build a meeting-house, must apply to the general court “to order and affix the place whereon their meeting house shalle be erected and built.” The penalty for building the meeting-house without order and appointment of site by the general court was £100. Usually the legislature simply legalized the site agreed upon by the people, but occasionally it used compulsion.⁴

Thus there was trouble about the meeting-house in Norwalk⁵ (1719). The old house was in great need of repairs, while the people were divided in mind as to renovating the old house or building a new one, and as to the site of the new one, if such should be determined on. So the general court appointed a committee to visit Norwalk to try and compose matters, and to report to the next session of the court. This committee does not seem to have attended to its duty, for at

the next session no report was made by them, and a committee was appointed, who should go to Norwalk, hear all parties, inspect all proposed sites, and determine the place for the house, “which place, so determined, shall be the place where the town of Norwalk shall set up their meeting house.” Or, if the committee advise repair of the old house, “so it shall be.”

A similar and more peremptory action was taken in regard to East Guilford.¹ The people there memorialized the legislature on their need of a new meeting-house, and a committee was appointed. The committee reported their choice of a site for the new house, as “on the green, where the old meeting house now stands, about mid-way between the said old meeting house and Captain Meiggs’ Sabbath house, the southeast corner of the said house to be at a stake stuck down by them.” This site was “fixed and determined” by act of the court. But some of the people objected and sent another memorial, alleging that the place ordered was out of the centre of the town, and that the “committee were imposed upon by a false plan; and praying that the same may be reviewed, and the place again affixed a wise, judicious committee.” So another committee was appointed and reported the same site, whereupon the court became very emphatic, determined to put up with no more complaint and division, enacting that “the inhabitants shall set up their meeting house in that place . . . and the said inhabitants are to take notice thereof and to conform themselves to this order.”

Another entry is worth citation as illustrating both the court’s care for meeting-houses and its liberal missionary spirit. In 1719 a bill was passed, “on petition of several,” granting a brief for “a publick contribution throughout the colony, to be improved in finishing a building of a meeting house for a Presbyterian Congregation in the city of New York.”²

The most dominating feature of the Connecticut system is in the exercise by the legislature of all the functions of a superior Ecclesiastical Court, to which appeals could come, and which, by way of review, could interfere for correction of irregularities. “The assembly was not often arbitrary, and did not use more than a fraction of its power. Without taking sides, it acted the part of a pacificator. . . but was ever ready to arrest by its authority any revolutionary or erratic movement, destructive of the purity of the gospel or the welfare of the Churches.”¹

We find cases of appeal by individuals from the discipline of the Churches,² with the evident understanding that it was competent for the legislature to review such proceedings and either sustain, or reverse, a Church sentence. There are also cases of legislative dismission of members from one Church to another. In 1741 John Norton of Guilford petitioned the general court for dismission from the fourth society of Guilford, and to be “joyned” to the first society, which petition was granted by formal act. By a like action in 1773 Elkanah Cobb and others were dismissed from the Church of Plainfield, and joined to the first society of Canterbury, “for all the purposes of society and ecclesiastical privileges only, but not for schooling, military, or other purposes.”³ The reasons for these actions are not stated, but it is probable that these individuals were seeking to indulge a preference for a particular minister or Church; and, not finding their former Church willing to gratify them with a dismission, appealed to the legislature, which in response exercised the function of a presbytery or council.

The most frequent exhibitions of such exercise were in connection with Church troubles and quarrels. When such arose the general court, either solicited by the parties or of its own motion, was prompt to interfere. Very early in the

history, the Church at Hartford¹ fell into dissension, for the healing of which the general court devoted much time and advice, with many persuasions and orders, in which was a curious blending of authority with deference to the opinion and influence of Church councils. Mather² says of the trouble: “Its true original is almost as obscure as the rise of the Connecticut River. But it proved in its unhappy consequences too like that river in its annual inundations, for it overspread the whole colony of Connecticut. The factions inserted themselves into the smallest as well as the greatest affairs of all the towns round about.” The case caused the first innovations on the established order, and the recognition of the right of dissent. As for Hartford, the court also legislated for difficulties in the Church of Wethersfield.³ In both Churches the trouble was of a moral nature, such as only an ecclesiastical court should be competent to adjudicate.

At Norwalk the people had fallen into sad quarrelling about their meeting-house, and the general court, exercising a spiritual jurisdiction,⁴ “recommended (them) to agree and solemnly comitt the decision of this Controversy to the dispose of the Most High, by a lott, which we hope may be that as will sattisfy and quiet the spirits of all the good people of that place, and he a hopeful means to continue and increase their faith and love.”

So when trouble came between the two Churches at Windsor, the general court stepped in and ordered the union of the two societies, adding to the order the admonition, “all the good people are required to be ayding and assisting thereto, and not in the least to appose or hinder the same, as they will answer the contrary at their peril.” This was in 1680. For two years thereafter the people could not agree upon a minister, when the legislature again interposed

with an order to settle Rev. Samuel Mather, and commanding that “all the people quietly attend Mr. Mather’s ministry, and proportionably comunecate to his honnerable mayntenance and incouragement in the work of Christ there.”¹ There was similar difficulty at Farmington, and the legislature appointed a committee to choose a minister, commanding the people to receive him as their minister for one year and to pay him the usual salary.²

One other such case may be cited for its peculiarity. A large portion of the Church of Norwich had become dissatisfied with the minister, Mr. Wills, and defaulted in payment of salary. Many complaints against, and from, Wills were brought to the general court. Mr. Wills wanted his money, and was afraid that his enemies would lock him out of the Church. The legislature commanded the people to use no violence and to yield the Church to Mr. Wills. Finally an. agreement was reached that the minister would resign, if the people would pay him the salary and also compensation for retiring. He fulfilled his part and resigned, and soon complained that the people had not paid him anything. On this the legislature ordered a tax on the society sufficient to pay Mr. Wills £80 for salary and £800 for compensation, and appointed its own committee to levy and collect the money.³

The interest felt in the Spiritual affairs of the Church finds frequent and varied expression. The general court constantly regarded itself as responsible for the state of religion in the commonwealth, and for the purity of doctrine. The court sent commissioners to the Boston synod of 1656, the synod of the famous Half-Way Covenant, and sent the action of the synod to all the Churches, requiring the Churches to inform the court of any objections. It asserted its own approval of the action, particularly commending the admission to baptism of the children of “persons having a competency of knowledge, of honest and godly conversation.”⁴

In 1666 the general court ordered a synod of all the ministers in the colony to meet at Hartford¹ and dispute on certain questions to be submitted by the court, most of them suggested by the Half-Way Covenant; e.g. “Whether federal holiness or covenant interest be not the proper ground of baptism.” The next year, to meet some objections from sticklers about terms, it changed the name of the proposed convention from “synod” to “assembly,” and proposed a general convention of clergy in the three colonies of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Plymouth, to consider the points. Nothing came of that motion, and the court contented itself with a less ambitious scheme, appointing, in 1668, Messrs. Fitch, Elliott, Bulkley, and Wakeman to meet at Saybrook and “consider of some expedient for our peace in the matters of discipline respecting membership and baptism.”²

The Connecticut clergy were far from unanimity of opinion on the points involved. The committee met as directed and agreed upon their report, on receipt of which the court declared its approval of the established system, “but yet forasmuch as sundry persons of prudence and piety are otherwise persuaded, this court doth declare that all such persons, being also approved according to law as orthodox and sound in the fundamentals of the Christian religion, may have allowance of their persuasion and profession in Church wayes or assemblies without disturbance.” This is the first full note for freedom in Connecticut legislation.

The matters of Religious Life received frequent attention from the court, with lamentations over any degeneracy and failure of instructions. From the beginning, attendance on public worship was compulsory, on penalty of five shillings for every absence. This requirement was renewed again and again.³ In 1702 an act was passed requiring every person to “carefully apply himself on the Lord’s day to the duties of

religion — to attend public worship in some congregation allowed by law, provided that he conscientiously and conveniently can attend.” Similar acts were passed in 1721, 1750, and 1770. The assembly of 1712¹ varied the form of title by an “Act for the better Detecting and more effectual Punishment of Prophaneness and Immortality,” notwithstanding which formidable title the only misdemeanor noted is neglect of public worship. This was repeated in 1721. The colony shared in the same tide of religious lukewarmness which caused so much alarm in Puritan Massachusetts, and the Connecticut legislators strove mightily to stem it. In 1675 the council of governor and assistants called a convention of ministers in the counties of Hartford and New Haven, “to make diligent search for those evils amongst us which have stirred up the Lord’s anger against us.”² The proclamation for a fast day in 1680 laments “the decay of love to God and one to another,” and urges prayers “that we may become an humble, fruitful, and holy people . . . for the better preservation and propagation of religion.”³ To reach existing evils intelligently, the general court in 1714 demanded from the general association of ministers “a Report on the State of Religion, touching common sins and neglects,” and suggestive of measures to abate them, “that thereby all possible means may be used for our healing and recovering from our degeneracy.”⁴ The report of the ministers contains a list of common evils,⁵ viz.: —

The reception of this report was followed by the enactment of stringent orders to selectmen and constables to enforce all laws touching on the points presented; and specially the laws about catechizing, public worship, profane swearing, the distribution of Bibles, and the “Act (of 1709)¹ to prevent Unreasonable Meetings of Young People in the evening after the Sundays and other times.”

Meanwhile the general court had all along, without waiting for ministerial initiative, held itself bound to rebuke all improprieties. It had its own views as to what were proper subjects for pulpit notices, and ordered its “secretary to write to Stoneington to manifest to them our dislike of that custome which is used amongst them in publishing their town concernes on the Sabbath day.”² In 1684 the court took order to rebuke “some provoaking evills, as viz: prophanation of the Sabboth, neglect of cattechiseing of children and servants, and of famaly prayer, young persons shakeing of the government of parents or masters; boarders and inmates neglecting the worship of God in the famalyes where they reside.”³ In 1721 the court passed a law for the election of “Tything-men,” two or more in each parish, to “carefully inspect the behaviour of all persons on the Sabbath or Lord’s day,” and to present any delinquent.⁴

In 1708 the general court took measures, perhaps the most important of all the ecclesiastical actions of that body, to bring order and unity out of the variant opinions and usages in the Churches, for which the Half-Way Covenant was largely responsible. This action was the call of the Saybrook Synod, which resulted in the celebrated Saybrook Platform and the virtual reestablishment of the Connecticut

Congregational Church.¹ The call, issued at the spring session of the court, ran: “This assembly, from their own observation and complaints of many others, being sensible of the defects of the discipline of the Churches of this government, hath seen fit to ordain and require, and it is by the authority of the same ordained and required, that the ministers of the several counties shall meet together, and shall appoint two or more of their number to be their delegates, who shall all meet together at Saybrook, at the next commencement to be held there, to draw a form of ecclesiastical discipline, which shall be offered to this court to be considered and confirmed by them: and the expense shall be defrayed out of the treasury of this colony.”

The synod met and prepared a report, containing the Confession of Faith and “Heads of Agreement and Regulations in the administration of Church Discipline,” and presented the same to the court at its October session. Thus, together with the work of the Cambridge synod, were formulated the statements of fundamental Congregational law. The general court signified its pleasure in the report, enacting as follows “This assembly do declare their great approbation, and do ordain that all the Churches within this government, that are or shall be thus united in doctrine, worship, and discipline, be and for the future shall be owned and acknowledged as established by law: Provided always, that nothing herein shall be intended or construed to hinder or prevent any society or Church, that is or shall be allowed by the laws of this government, who soberly differ or dissent from the united Churches hereby established, from exercising worship and discipline in their own way, according to their consciences.” This action of the court was final, and the platform was not. referred to the Churches. It was ordered to be printed and distributed, and from the legislature itself went forth as the ecclesiastical constitution of the commonwealth.

Solely on this latter account is it matter for discussion here. Its expression of faith and principles of polity do not concern our present purpose. The significant thing is that the civil authority with the word of command imposed it on the Churches, an action of the same import as that by which the parliament imposed the prayer book and prelacy on the Church of England. There was, indeed, this difference, that the Connecticut legislature proposed no harsh restraint and declared no penalties for non-conformity. On the contrary, the act adopting the platform made express provision for permission of dissent, with only the consequence that a dissenting Church could not belong to the establishment — a consequence, in view of other legislation, of no serious importance.

That other legislation made room for many varieties of dissent, with a liberality surpassing that of other establishments, and with a surprising readiness to concede a broad toleration. This readiness stands in sharp contrast with the grudging concessions of Massachusetts, where every gain of liberty was extorted from unwilling legislators. This contrast, however, needs to be qualified by the reflection that, because of the homogeneity of the people, the crucial questions of toleration did not arise in Connecticut until after the first two generations had passed away. Yet it is reasonable to think that the colony of Hooker never could have exiled Williams or Mrs. Hutchinson. Certainly, they did not approach the severity of Boston in dealing with the Quakers.

This sect gave the first occasion for laws of discrimination among religionists. That enthusiastic people appeared about the same time (1656) in all the colonies, all of which except Plymouth and Rhode Island felt called upon to legislate against them. The measures adopted in Connecticut, for repressive character, lagged far behind those of Massachusetts, New Haven, New York, and Virginia. It may be doubted whether the general court would have enacted any

laws at all against Quakers, had it not been for the pressure of Massachusetts in the union of the four colonies. As hitherto noted in the sketches of Plymouth and Massachusetts, the Bay colony was anxious for the moral support of the other colonies in its harshness toward that sect. Plymouth declined the action desired, but Connecticut yielded so far as to make a statute of repressive character, but which, like Bottom, “roared like any sucking dove.” It used terms designedly opprobrious, — “Quakers, Ranters, Adamites, or such like notorious heretiques,” but curiously enough directed the legislation, not against the heretics, but the town entertaining them.¹ The act of 1656 provided that, “no towne within this Jurisdiction shall entertaine (such persons) above the space of fourteen days, upon penalty of £5 per weeke for any towne.” The act further said, “If the towne please,” it could lodge the Quakers in prison until they could be conveniently sent away. Shipmasters were to be mulcted in £20 for bringing Quakers to the colony. The act of 1657 forbade a town giving any “unnecessary entertainment,” and corrected a fault of the previous law by defining that the fine must “be paid by that inhabitant who gives the entertainment” to the Quakers. It also imposed an equal fine on any “who shall unnecessarily speak with” the heretics. The next year, the possession of Quaker books was forbidden under penalty of ten shillings to all persons, “except teaching Elders”; and then the court dismissed the whole matter by leaving “to the discretion” of town magistrates the treatment of “any such person found fomenting their wicked Tenets — to punish by fine, imprisonment, or corporeal punishment, as they judge meete.”

One can hardly call such legislation very severe, or imagine a much less offensive way of notifying persons that their presence was unwelcome. The discretion and pleasure allowed to local officers the concession of fourteen days and of necessary entertainment, with the studious avoidance of any penalties

upon the Quakers themselves beyond the order that they leave the colony — are all tokens of the legislative unwillingness to assume the rôle of the persecutor.

Nor was there any persecution under these acts. With these laws Massachusetts had to be satisfied, and by them the Quakers in Connecticut were practically unmolested. Fifty years afterward (1705), these acts, almost dead letters with their enactment, met a ridiculously solemn resurrection, when Queen Anne in council formally annulled them and drew to them the attention of the Connecticut legislature, requiring their repeal.¹ The general court at its next session accordingly passed an act of repeal; hardly, one must think, without consciousness of the absurdity of the whole proceeding.

The next item showing the Connecticut tendency toward freedom comes in the story of the charter of 1662, which merged New Haven in Connecticut, and also in the correspondence of the king’s commissioners to the colonies. In 1661 the general court of Connecticut addressed a petition to the king, reciting that, “they had laid out a great sum for the purchasing a Jurisdiction Right of Mr. George Fenwick, which they were given to understand was derived from true Royal authority by Letters Pattent;”² and now expressing their desire that the king would “confer upon them by direct patent their power and privileges.”³ In furtherance of this desire the court sent with the petition their governor, John Winthrop the younger, than whom there was not in New England a more efficient agent.⁴ A man of fine scholarship, wide knowledge of books and the world, and withal a person of great refinement and urbanity of manner, he was equally fitted for the colony and the court. He struck the same mood of royal complacency which was equal to the larger demands of Roger Williams, whose visit to London coincided with his

own. Both men obtained from Charles all that they asked, and Winthrop wrote in high spirits from London to the colonial treasurer, John Talcott, on May 13, 1662, “The Charter . . . hath newly passed the great scale, and is as full and large for bounds and privileges as could be desired.”¹ He might well be pleased, for the charter confirmed, what had hitherto existed only on sufferance, the privileges of a self-governing republic, subject only to the king’s allegiance. It imposed no restraints upon religious preferences, nor demanded the admission of the Church of England, but left the entire question of Church and religion in the power of the colony. Two years afterward the governor and general court, in grateful recognition of the king’s bounty, requested his commissioners to represent to the king their sense of “his more abundant grace in re-ratifying our privileges both civil and ecclesiastick . . . (and) our Christian moderation to men of different persuasions.”²

The royal commissioners to the New England colonies were sent over in 1664. As already noted in our sketch of Massachusetts, their experience in that colony was not very pleasant. They had to deal with men not given to toleration and also struggling for their charter as a man struggles for his life. In Connecticut they met a different reception from men already grateful for a royal favor, and quite justifying the language of Lord Chancellor Clarendon in his letter to Winthrop, announcing their coming: “I know you will give that reception and welcome to the commissioners as is due to the quality they come to you in.”³

That portion of their instructions which had special reference to Connecticut ran in part: “You shall take the best meanes . . . that you may know the full difference between them and the Massachusetts, both in their Civil and Ecclesiasticall

estate . . . making the same declaration to them, and to all the rest, of your firme resolution to defend and maintain their charter, without the least restraining them in the free exercise of their religion; but insisting with them, as with the rest, that all the rest who dissent from them, may have the like liberty without undergoing any disadvantages with reference to their civill interest, but that they enjoy the same privileges with the rest.”¹

As already noted, Cartwright wrote from Boston to Nicolls, “I doe think it will be better to beginne at Conecticote.” Certainly they found there an accommodating spirit, though it must be conceded that their demands were much less exact and imperious than those made upon Massachusetts. They submitted to the general court several propositions, of which the third required “That all persons of civil lives may freely enjoy the liberty of their consciences and the worship of God in that way which they think best, provided that this liberty lead not to the disturbance of the public, nor to the hindrance of the maintenance of ministers regularly chosen in each respective parish or township.” To this the general court replied: “To the third proposition; we say, we know not of any one that hath bin troubled by us for attending to his conscience, provided he hath not disturbed the publique.”²

This indicates small difference between the commissioners and the general court. It is remarkable that the former made no special mention of the Church of England service, nor referred to the use of the book of common prayer, while the provision in their last clause virtually conceded that dissenters, while allowed liberty of their own worship, might yet be taxed for the maintenance of the regular ministry. The demands on Massachusetts were quite different, strenuously insisting on the English Church service, and exemption of Episcopalians from the rates of the establishment. This difference may perhaps be accounted for by several facts. Not

many Episcopalians had as yet settled in Connecticut, while in Massachusetts they were either numerous or very clamorous. Connecticut also had distinguished itself from the sister colony by consistently following a far more liberal policy, so that, either because of this policy or the want of occasion, no religious antagonisms had voiced themselves in her past. To these must be added the different dispositions toward the king and his commissioners. Roger Wolcott in his Memorial of Connecticut¹ says, “They (the commissioners) were ill received at Boston, but courteously in Connecticut.” Undoubtedly, the prejudice and suspicion of the one colony, and the affability of the other, had much to do with the temper and demands of the king’s agents. For Connecticut they provided no ground of complaint, nor made any further demand for liberty of worship, satisfied with the general disclaimer by the court of all intolerance.

Four years afterward (1669) the general court made that distinct acknowledgment of liberty of opinion and practice within the established Church, already recorded in our account of the Saybrook committee.² It is notable for its generous spirit, and for its understanding that even a religious establishment must admit a degree of elasticity in its laws of uniformity — an understanding exceedingly rare at that day.

The proportion of dissent, and the practical religious unanimity of Connecticut in 1680, may be gathered from the annual report of Governor Leete to the board of trade in London.³ To the board’s inquiry as to religious matters the governor replied that there were twenty-six towns and twenty-one Churches, with a minister in every town, whose support was “raysed upon the people by way of rate. . . . Our people in this colony are, some strict Congregational men, others more large Congregational, some moderate Presbyterians; and take the Congregational men

of both sorts, they are the greatest part of the people in the colony. There are four or five Seven day men, and about so many more Quakers. Great care is taken for the instruction of the people in the Xtian religion, by ministers cattechizing of them and preaching to them twice every Sabboth dayes, and sometimes on Lecture dayes: and so by masters of famalyes instructing and cattechizing their children and servants, being soe required to doe by law.” From such a showing it would appear that there was but small room for either dissent or repression. There is a record of a very transient disturbing clement which appeared about 1680, caused by followers of a certain John Rogers,¹ from whom they were called Rogerines.² They were half Quaker and half Baptist, “passionate denunciators and defiant,” upbraided the judges and the courts, railed at the ministers as hirelings, refused to pay rates, and labored on Sunday. They did not meet the notice and opposition through which such vagaries grow, and have left no distinct trace on the legislation of the colony.

The attempted usurpation of James II. and Andros had no effect upon the religious status of Connecticut, unless we remark that it drove the people to much prayer. The crisis was short and sharp, with something of the dramatic and a touch or two of humor. The king’s jealousy succeeded in annulling the Maryland and Massachusetts charters, and demanded through Andros the surrender of the charter of Connecticut. Then occurred the famous incident of the darkened council-chamber, the abstraction of the charter, and its concealment by Captain Wadsworth in the hollow of the oak. Never had dawned upon the colony a time of so great excitement. The first intimation that their charter and their separate colonial existence were in danger had caused an address to the king (1686) in which they said: “We humbly beg and beseech your Ma’tie to continue our intire Province

or Government within our known bounds and colony limits.” When in the next year Andros came to Hartford and peremptorily demanded the charter, the people added to the clever abstraction of that instrument so much of prayer for divine assistance, that the governor was impressed and worried by it. Wolcott relates: — “One morning he said to Doctor Hooker, he thought the good people of Connecticut kept many days of fasting and prayer on his account. ‘Very likely,’ says the doctor, ‘for we read that this kind goeth not out by other means.’”¹ With the accession of William and Mary the colony was again more fortunate than Massachusetts and Maryland, whose forfeited charters were not restored. Connecticut retained all its liberties, electing its own governor and assistants, and was supported therein by the king’s solicitor-general, whose opinion, sought by William, was that the colony was within its legal rights in so doing and its charter still in force.² Thus the colony was permitted to go on in its own self-determining way, in the story of which we find no incident for remark here until 1706.

Then appeared the first movements toward organized dissent from the established order, in the efforts to gather an Episcopal Church at Stratford. In that year the Rev. Mr. Muirson went thither from New York, probably on invitation from some residents of Stratford, preached and baptized twenty-five persons.³ This roused opposition by some of the people, but the missionary was not molested. In the following year he came again, and labored also at Fairfield, though not without the strenuous urgencies of both magistrates and the regular clergy to the people not to attend his services. The opposition confined itself to these urgencies, and did not resort to any violence against the minister. This was the beginning of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut,

which soon made room for itself in the colony and in the tolerant consideration of the authorities.

Its effect on the statute book was immediate, for in 1708 the general court, undoubtedly to meet the condition thus arising, enacted its first law concerning “Dissenters from the Established order.”¹ This was the year of the Saybrook synod, and it would seem that the court, having settled the affairs of the established Church to its mind, was specially complacent toward such as preferred another way of worship. The act decreed that dissenters should have full liberty of worship, “without any let, hindrance, or molestation whatsoever,” provided that they “qualify” as such by entering their names in the county court, “according to the Act of William and Mary.” But they were not exempted from paying rates for the support of the established Church. The law is in entire agreement with the “proviso” of the act by which the Saybrook Platform was adopted, and in very similar words.

The legislature of 1708 thus made two distinct declarations of its tolerant mind. It will be noted that by this time the prayer book had conquered liberty for itself in Massachusetts, and in New York the folly of Cornbury was trying to force its use on unwilling people. The peculiarity of Connecticut is that, on the first occasion of its claim, it met a tolerant treatment. The device of qualifying before the county court and obtaining a legal permission is also another peculiarity in this colony, significant not only of toleration but of the governmental intent to keep a controlling hand on religious matters outside of the establishment, as within it. This latter purpose obtained down to the end of the colonial period, a late instance of which may be cited in a petition from Baptists in Lyme, in 1767, praying to be organized into a distinct Church society. The general court approved, and appointed a committee of its own members to visit Lyme and report.²

After the liberal laws of 1708 the religious affairs of the colony were without special incident for narration here until 1722, when the established Church was much moved by the defection of President Timothy Cutler of Yale College, Samuel Johnson, and four other members of the New Haven association. These men startled their Congregational brethren by going together into the Episcopal Church. They became a subject of much ill-natured remark and of much correspondence. Cotton Mather comments very severely on the “new Episcopalians,” and declares that Cutler had all the time been a “secret Episcopalian, and a seducer of young men in the ministry.”¹ The excitement soon subsided, and the right of the six clergymen to take this step was generally conceded. Out of the incident came what in modern speech would be called a “great boom” for Episcopacy, the infant efforts of which had been somewhat languishing. In the next year (1723) the first Episcopal Church in Connecticut was organized at Stratford, through the agency of Mr. Pigott, a missionary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and Mr. Johnson was settled as its rector.²

About the same time, it would appear that some irregularities had become prominent. Taking advantage of the liberal spirit of the authorities, some dissenters had presumed to neglect reporting to the county court, and some persons, “without the least pretence or color of being ordained (as) ministers of the gospel have presumed to gather together in a tumultuous manner and to administer the sacrament of baptism, to the great abuse and prophanation of that holy ordinance.” There is no record to show the denomination of these disorderly people. Possibly they were Rogerines. To meet this condition the legislature of 1723 passed an “Act for preventing Disorders in the Worship of God.”³ The act, after reciting the above disorders, insisted that all dissenters

must “qualify” under the law of 1708, and ordained that such persons as “neglect the public worship of God in some lawful congregation, and form themselves into separate companies in private houses, shall each for every offense forfeit the sum of twenty shillings.” It denounced a fine of £10 and a whipping on any person, not a minister, who should dare to administer the sacraments. This is the sharpest specimen of Connecticut law on the subject of religion, and the only one in which the whip is resorted to for penalty. It can be accounted for only on the supposition that the disorders had been extreme, and cannot be cited as a departure from the policy of regulated tolerance. But we find no record of the infliction of these penalties.

That this construction is the true one seems provable by the spirit of accommodation exhibited by the authorities in the matter of rate-paying by dissenters. On this theme there had been much discussion and many appeals for relief, and though the formal legislative action toward that end was not taken until 1727, there are indications that the authorities were not exacting in the cases of orderly and organized dissent. Only so can we understand Governor Talcott’s correspondence with the bishop of London.¹ “(There is) one particular,” wrote the bishop in 1725, “in which I desire your favor and indulgence to the members of the Church of England, as far as justice and the laws of the country will permit; and that is, that they may not be constrained to contribute to the Independent minister.” To this the governor replied: “There is but one Church of England minister (Mr. Johnson of Stratford) in this colony. His people are under no restraint to contribute to the support of any other minister.” There are “some few persons in another town,” pretending to be of the Church of England, and objecting to rates “in order to escape a small tax.” A fair construction of the governor’s reply leads to the conclusion, that by a tacit understanding, while all the people were required to contribute to the support

of religious service, and while no merely individual dissent in places having no properly organized dissenting Church could exempt from rates; yet, in places where such a Church was organized and attended, its members were allowed to divert their rates to the support of their own minister.

Very soon after this correspondence occasion was served by an act of oppression for a legal allowance of this liberty.¹ The local magistrates in the town of Fairfield in 1727 refused to allow this diversion of rates, and insisted that the members of the Episcopal Church should pay to the support of the established Church. They carried their insistence to the extreme of putting in jail ten Episcopalians for declining to pay.

An appeal to the legislature by the outraged Episcopalians brought immediate relief in the “Act for the Ease of such as soberly Dissent,” of 1727,² passed with special regard to the Church of England. The law first declared that all persons of the Church of England, living within the bounds of an established parish, should be taxed for the support of the ministry; then it ordained, “if there be a society of the Church of England with a rector, so near that any person, who has declared himself a member of the Church of England, can conveniently attend,” the collectors, “having indifferently levied the tax as aforesaid, shall deliver the taxes collected of such persons to the minister of the Church of England living near to such persons.” The act also allowed the Episcopalians to further tax themselves for an increase of their rector’s salary.

This law is closely like the famous “Five-Mile Act” of Massachusetts, passed by a notable coincidence in the same year. It is less exact than the Massachusetts law, which put a limit of five miles on the range of Episcopal affiliations. This difference really amounted to nothing, for both acts put the seal of legal allowance and exemption on the tolerated sect. The Massachusetts act was broader in not confining

its favor to the Episcopalians, but extending it to all orderly dissenters. Two years afterward, the Connecticut legislature supplied their omission by extending the benefit of the act to the Quakers and Baptists.¹ As in Massachusetts, so in Connecticut, the technical construction of the act, through its instrumentality of charging the civil officers with the collection of all Church support, incorporated the dissenting Churches into the Church establishment!

So the churches had rest for a while until the rise of that convulsion, known as the Great Awakening. This movement, the sequel to Whitefield’s preaching tours, besides its effects of much spiritual quickening, was attended by many most deplorable features. The reaction from the conservatism of the past had resulted in many cases in the wildest extravagances of action and speech. Many of the promoters of the movement were unbridled in their denunciations of the ministers, who could not go with them in the “new measures.” They intruded upon parishes, holding irregular services, urging people not to attend the ministry of their pastors, whom they reviled as unconverted. New England was divided among “New Lights” and “Old Lights,” while the Presbyterian Church in the middle colonies was split into “Old Side” and “New Side.”²

To the staid representatives of the Connecticut establishment this assault of excited itinerant and intrusive preachers was a grievous offence. Not only did these preachers embrace every opportunity offered by sympathizers, but they forced themselves into parishes, uninvited and opposed by the settled pastors.

Among the most troublesome of these itinerants was James Davenport, pastor at Southold, Long Island, in whom the balance of mind was unsettled by the revival excitement.³

He came into Connecticut with Whitefield in 1740, and again in 1741 alone, preaching at Stratford, Saybrook, and other places, and used most violent language against the ministers and Churches with “unrestrained liberty of noise and outcry in time of divine service.” A bit of correspondence between Colonel Lynde of Saybrook and Governor Talcott may illustrate the mind of the more sober sort.

The colonel wrote to the governor complaining of Davenport’s conduct at Saybrook, where he had intruded his service in the parish of the Rev. Mr. Hart, whom he had treated with great disrespect. Lynde as a magistrate had thought of prosecuting him, but applied to the governor for advice. The reply of the latter, under date of September 4, 1741, is grave and severe. “I am surprised,” he wrote, “that Mr. Davenport should in so imperious and unwarrientable manner take upon him to condemn any, and Especially our most Eminently pious and Industrious Ministers, to be Carnall &c., which I look upon as usurping the authority of the Most High. And his advice to people not to hearken to their Ministers by him condemned, but to go 10 or 20 miles, and that they had better sett upon private meetings amongst themselves, &c; all which is a violation and open contempt of the Laws of this Colony, and so apparently tends to the breach of the peace of our Religious Sosiaties and subversion of all good orders in Church and State.” The governor then called on ministers, people, and magistrates to “use all their Joynt Interest by advice, Influence, and authority, to Incourage what is vertuous and praiseworthy, and to suppress every disorderly and Vile practice and whatsoever tends to the hurt and Reproach of Religion.”

So great had the trouble become in a large portion of the colony, that in the fall session of 1741 the assembly summoned the general association of ministers to meet at Guilford in the following November to devise a remedy, “hoping that such a general convention may issue in the accommodation of divisions, settling peace, love, and charity, and promoting

the true interests of vital religion.”¹ The convention met accordingly, and after discussion found the root of the trouble in the unwarranted intrusion of itinerant preachers into parishes, and recommended to the legislature measures to correct that evil. This advice was adopted by the general court, which at its next session, 1742, passed an “Act for regulating Abuses and correcting Disorders in Ecclesiastical Affairs.”² The act declared: 1st, That any minister, preaching in other than his own parish without the request of the incumbent, or of the officers of the Church, if there were no incumbent, should be denied the support provided by law; 2d, That every member of any association, intruding by licensure or ordination on the province of another association, should be denied support; 3d, That any person, not a settled or ordained minister, preaching in any parish without “express invitation” of the minister of it, or of the officers, should be fined £100; and 4th, That any foreigner or stranger, ordained or not, so offending should be “sent (as a vagrant person) by warrant from any one assistant or justice of the peace, from constable to constable, out of the bounds of this colony.” Some foreigners were expelled, but returned again, the next year, when the legislature ordered that they be arrested, fined £100, and again driven away.³

One of the preachers sent out of the colony was Davenport, who had had similar treatment at Boston. Complaints of his conduct at Stratford had been lodged with the court. He was summoned to appear before that body, whose deliverance, after examination, ran: “That the acts of Davenport do, and have a natural tendency to, disturb and destroy the peace and order of this government. Yet it further appears to this Assembly that the said Davenport is under the influence of enthusiastical impressions and impulses, and thereby disturbed in the rational faculty of his mind, and therefore to be pitied

and compassionated, and not to be treated as he otherwise might be.” With this opinion, the assembly ordered his transportation to his home at Southold.¹

Another subject of legislative censure was Benjamin Pumroy. He was first summoned before the court with James Davenport, but was discharged. Afterward he was again summoned on a bill of information charging him with preaching that “the late law concerning ecclesiastical affairs was a foundation to encourage persecution . . . was made without reason and contrary to the word of God . . . that great men had fallen in and joyned with those who are on the devil’s side and enemies of the kingdom of Christ. . . . There is no colony so privileged as Connecticut was, and now there is no colony so bad for persecuting laws.” Pumroy was arraigned before the court, found guilty, and fined £50, with costs at £32 10s. 8d.²

Another case was that of the Rev. John Owen, the minister of the Church at Groton, who sympathized with the “New Lights,” and freely expressed in his preaching his condemnation of the proceedings of the general court. This was construed by the court as “tending to bring the laws of this government into contempt,” on which the arrest of Owen was ordered and his production before the assembly. He appeared, confessed the language alleged, promised amendment, and was discharged on payment of costs.³

While there can be no doubt that the conduct which caused this legislation must have been most exasperating to the majority of ministers and magistrates, yet it is equally beyond doubt that both the appeal to the legislature and the law of 1742 were mistakes. Had the ministry been content to possess their souls in patience, the evil fire would soon have burned itself out. The measures taken added to the trouble and made a distinctly backward step in toleration; while the

members of dissenting Churches, which had nothing to do with the disturbances, — unless it may be that some individual Episcopalians and Baptists joined their neighbors of the establishment in this resort to government, — were made the chief sufferers by the action. For in 1743 the general court, as though the inroad of intrusive itinerants had been the work of dissenters and the product of its acts of toleration, repealed the act of 1708 “for the Ease of such as Soberly Dissent,” and substituted for it another law, according a far less degree of liberty.¹

The new law defined that “any of His Majesty’s subjects, being protestants, inhabitants of this colony, that shall soberly dissent from the way of worship and ministry established by the laws of this colony . . . may apply themselves to this Assembly for relief . . . (and) may expect the indulgence of this Assembly, having first before this Assembly taken the oaths and subscribed the declaration² provided by Act of Parliament in cases of the like nature.”

The narrow and crippling nature of this statute is evident at a glance, when compared with the law of 1708. That law put no vexatious or doubtful obstacles in the way of dissenters. It was general and prescribed comparatively easy rules, under which any dissenting congregation, complying therewith, could demand from their own county court recognition of their rights to organization and worship. The new act took away this ease and liberty, and hampered the dissenters with rules in many possible cases difficult of observance. It does not appear that dissenting Churches already organized were necessarily affected by the statute, but the formation of others was made vexatiously difficult. In place of their own county court, the legislature was made the constituting authority. Dissenters applying, though living at the ends of the colony, must appear in person at Hartford, in order to take the oath “before this Assembly.” The right of organization

was changed to a favor, which, though the applicants were bidden to “expect the indulgence” of the assembly, might be denied on any caprice. In place of the general law covering all cases, the new statute becomes particular, compelling a request for legislative action in every individual case.

While this comparison of the two laws shows the retrograde movement noted, at the same time we may not fail to observe what goes far toward justifying the legislature, that by the act of 1743 dissenting Churches were put on a level with those of the establishment. No Congregational Church could be organized without an express act of the general court, so that in fact between 1708 and 1743, the dissenters had a larger liberty than members of the establishment in matters of organization. Though they were crippled by the new law, they were no worse off than their Congregational neighbors, save as respects the requirement of personal appearance before the legislature.

Another feature of the act of 1743 introduced an entirely new element in Connecticut legislation. This is the clause, “being protestants,” the effect of which was to deny toleration to Romanists. Under the statute no room was made for Roman Catholic Churches. This is the first instance in which the laws of the colony recognized the distinction between Protestant and Romanist. The explanation of its absence from former legislation is undoubtedly the fact, that no Romanist had settled in the colony in the past years, and no occasion was given for anti-Roman enactments. Nor does it appear that any of the Roman Church were in Connecticut in 1743 in sufficient numbers to cause any alarm. The form and phrases of the statute, with its reference to the king, parliament, and oaths, suggest that the committee which drew the bill had in mind English toleration, and that thus the words, “being protestants,” together with the requirement of the oath, crept into the statute without any special intention of emphasis. At the same time one cannot

altogether avoid regret that the usually tolerant Connecticut should even, by indirection, appear to have ever joined in the insane cry of “No Popery.”

Another law of 1743 cannot be so easily excused. This is an “Act providing Relief against the evil and dangerous Designs of Foreigners and Suspected Persons.”¹ The best that can be said for it is that, though it had a decided bearing on religious matters, yet the evident motive of the act war political. It was directed against the Moravians, who were engaged in teaching the Indians of the Housatonic Valley at Sharon and Kent. Their work had extended also across the border into Dutchess County, New York, and in this same year brought upon them the expulsive action of the New York assembly. In both colonies ignorant prejudice and irrational fear of the French had more to do with the actions against them than any religious considerations. Though their work was clearly of the most humane and Christian character, it was whispered that they were Jesuits in the interest of the French of Canada, affecting the minds of their Indian pupils against the English. This was enough to excite the alarm of the surrounding community, and to forward complaints to the general court.

The preaching and teaching also were objected to as a violation of the law of 1742 against intrusion, though it does not appear that they were at all guilty of the intrusion defined in the law, as they labored only among the Indians, attempting no interference in any parish. Such intrusion, indeed, was impossible to their foreign tongue. Perhaps this latter fact may suggest that the legislature thought the law of 1742 not sufficient to cover the case and caused the new act, the title of which has just been recited. The act described “foreigners and suspected persons who sow and spread false and dangerous doctrines of religion amongst us, to stir up discord, to estrange the minds of the Indians from us,” and ordered that all such suspected persons “be arrested and taken before the Governor,

who shall use such meanes as may be proper” to protect the colony from danger.

¹ Under this law three of the Moravians — Mack, Shaw, and Pyrlaens, a highly educated minister — were arrested and examined by the county court at New Milford. They were not able to satisfy the court, and were bound over to appear before the governor. Governor Law examined them three times, and easily satisfied himself that they were not French spies, but doubted whether they might be teachers of “false and dangerous doctrine.” Mack gave bonds not to preach in any parish without permission. The protest of Count Zinzendorf will be found related in our story of New York, as also the protection of the British government, which described the Moravians as “brethren introduced to the colonies by Parliament as members of an ancient Protestant Episcopal Church.” This did not satisfy the people, who complained that “parliamentary interference was becoming offensive, and that there were too many Episcopalians in Connecticut already.” The final result was that the godly work of Moravians in the colony and in New York was broken up, and the teachers forced to seek refuge in Pennsylvania, whither many of their pupils followed them.

After this almost tragic incident, one of the darkest blots on Connecticut colonial legislation, the records contain few matters calling for present remark. To the end of the period, and after, the assembly held fast to its principles of ecclesiastical control. Churches of the establishment still looked to the legislature for organization and support, and dissenters for any desired relief or exemption; while in the exercise of its ecclesiastical functions the assembly showed a return to its former readiness for liberality. Sundry illustrations of both these features may properly be noted.

The “Separates,” — the “New Lights,” — who had withdrawn from the regular Churches and formed separate Congregational

Churches, were granted liberty.¹ Those at Milford were in 1750 allowed to organize, and to be exempted from regular Church rates, “so long as they shall regularly attend the worship of God in said separate congregation.” In 1760 this Separate Church was transformed into a Presbyterian Church by act of assembly. In 1751 the First Church of New Haven fell into dissension, and the assembly interfered for peace.² In 1757 the Baptists of Enfield were exempted from Church rates.³ Between 1751 and 1772 sixty Churches were organized by the legislature, and many “winter privileges” were granted.⁴ (A winter privilege allowed a portion of a parish, so distant from the Church as to make attendance difficult in that season, to employ a minister for themselves during the winter.⁵) In 1767 the second Church of Lyme was reported to the assembly as without a minister for several years. The information came from the New London association, and the assembly appointed a committee to visit Lyme and report. The most remarkable action of the legislature on the subject of religion, not only during this immediate period, but in its entire annals, was an order, made at the instance of the English government, that “the Form of Prayer for the Royal Family” (from the English prayer-book) be published and read in all the Churches!⁶ This action was taken in 1751, a signal illustration of Connecticut liberality and complaisance.

This may suffice for the narrative of colonial Connecticut in its relation to the Church. Clearly, it occupied a middle ground between theocratic Massachusetts and free Rhode Island. Its distinguishing features were an insistence on governmental control, with as large a liberty as that ideal would permit. When an unaccustomed impulse to repress any dissent took momentary possession, the reserve of good and liberal sense made legislation fall far short of genuine

persecution, while the impulse quickly passed. Confidently it may be said that, among the establishments of the colonies that of Connecticut was by far the best. The absence of the theocratic ideal prevented both that arrogance of the ministry, under which Massachusetts suffered, and the assumption that the state was a mere servant of the Church. Begun under the fostering care of the broad-minded Hooker, the colony for the most part guided itself by his principles, and was fully ready in feeling for the changes of the Revolution, though some details of form remained for forty years thereafter.

The short-lived effort of the New Haven colony labored to establish a theocracy even more strict than that of Massachusetts, in which every public utterance and action was to be guided by, and an expression of, the divine law. Its civil leader for many years was Theophilus Eaton, one of a company of English merchants, rich and educated, who with decided Puritan principles associated themselves together to follow the Massachusetts colony into the new world. Their spiritual guide was John Davenport, a friend of Hooker and Cotton, settled in a London parish at the time of their emigration and at that time out of sympathy with their motives. A man of great mental force and of high moral education, and withal of great eloquence as a preacher, not long after the departure of his friends from England, he found reason to change his opinions and soon drew upon himself the hostility of Archbishop Laud. He fled to Amsterdam, whence in 1636 he returned to join Eaton and his companions in their American venture.

In the latter part of that year the company arrived at Boston, in the very height of the antinomian controversy. The air was full of contest. Roger Williams had just been banished, and the mind of the ministry and magistracy was evidently

bent on excluding Mrs. Hutchinson and silencing her adherents. On points of doctrine involved Davenport and Eaton were in full accord with the authorities at the Bay, but were affected against settlement there by the universal strife. It is probable that their original intention had been to join themselves to the Massachusetts colony, and that the strife at Boston moved them to attempt a new settlement, desiring to found it in peace and without the presence of disturbing elements. So they set themselves to discover a place of habitation which should be their own. Winthrop wrote,¹ “Mr. Eaton and some others of Mr. Davenport’s company went to view Quinepiack, with intent to begin a plantation there;” and, after the new colony had left Boston, “all possible means had been used to accommodate them. They had many offers: Charlestown offered largely, Newbury their whole town, the Court any place which was free.”

In 1638 Eaton, Davenport, and their companions left Boston, settled about the bay which receives the Quinnipiac, and founded the colony and city of New Haven.² Never, not even among the Puritans of Massachusetts, was made another so religious foundation. On the 4th of June, 1639,³ was held their first “general meeting to consult about settling their civil Government according to God . . . for the establishing of such civil order as might be most pleasing to God, and for the choosing the fittest men for the foundation work of a Church to be gathered.” At this meeting it was voted, “no man dissenting,” that “the Scriptures do hold forth a perfect rule for the direction and government of all men in all duties, which they are to perform to God and men, as well in the government of families and commonwealths as in matters of the Church.”

With this as the cardinal principle to be observed in all arrangements, they proceeded to enter into a “Fundamental

Agreement —¹ a covenant solemnly made by the whole assembly: 1st, that the Word of God shall be the only Rule attended unto in ordering the affairs of government;” 2d, that they should “cast themselves into that mould and form of commonwealth which appeareth best, in reference to the securing of the pure and peaceable enjoyment of all Christ His ordinances in the Church according to God”; and 3d (twice voted in this one meeting), “that the free burgesses shall be chosen from Church members, and they only shall choose magistrates and officers among themselves to have the power of transacting all public civil affairs of the Plantation.” It was then ordered “that all hereafter received as planters shall submit to this fundamental agreement.”

Having thus outlined their principle of civil government, they turned to ecclesiastical matters and chose “Seven Pillars” to be the governors of the Church, both the title and number of these officers being suggested by Mr. Davenport from Proverbs ix. 1. “Wisdom hath builded her house; she hath hewn out her seven pillars.” These seven pillars, thus primarily appointed to a spiritual office, seem to have been vested also with a supreme civil function; for in October of the same year they “chose a chief magistrate or Governor, and four deputies to assist in public affairs.” The governor then elected was Theophilus Eaton, who was reëlected for many successive years. This first election was regarded as a thing of great solemnity and was preceded by a sermon by Mr. Davenport, “opening two scriptures, Deut. i. 13, and Ex. xviii. 21”; the advice of Jethro to Moses, “Provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth . . . to be rulers;” and Moses’ command, “Take you wise men, and understanding, and known among your tribes, and I will make them rulers over you.”

Presently, the “General Court” was established, consisting at first only of the governor and four deputies, but increased in number by the settlement of other towns. It

was formally resolved, “that the Duty of the general court was: 1st, To provide for the maintenance of the purity of religion, and to suppress the contrary; 2d, To declare, publish, and establish . . . the laws for holiness and righteousness which God hath made and given to us in the Scriptures.”

So closely did the men of the new colony adhere to the idea of a government directly controlled, as was that of ancient Israel, by God Himself.¹ The endeavor was to revive the old Mosaic forms; and Davenport, whose moulding hand is seen throughout, even went so far as to put himself in the place of the great Law-giver, when he said to the governor, “The cause that is too hard for you, bring it to me and I will hear it.” Certainly, Davenport looked upon the work as very good, writing in 1639 to Lady Vere,² “The Lord our God hath here bestowed upon us the greatest outward privilege under the sun, to have and enjoy all His ordinances purely dispensed in a Church gathered and constituted according to his owne minde.” The author of the Wonder-working Providence of Zion’s Saviour³ was no less delighted, writing: “This government of New Haven, although the younger of the foure, yet was she as beautifull as any of this broode of travellers and most minding the end of her coming hither, to keep close to the rule of Christ both in Doctrine and Discipline; and it were to be wished her elder Sister⁴ would followe her example.”

It would be difficult in a commonwealth so constituted to draw the line between Church and State. Evidently the founders considered the two as identical. Those of their number who afterward crossed the sound and settled on Long Island, the eastern part of which for years was under the jurisdiction, first of New Haven and afterward of Connecticut, illustrated the same principle in the organization of

their towns. Thus “the early history of Southold discloses no polity or discipline of the Church apart from the government of the town.”¹ The entire organization of colony and towns was strictly religious, beyond anything in history since the foundations of Israel. The power of the clergy was supreme. The seven pillars of the New Haven Church not only chose the colonial governor, but were the magistrates of the town. The same religious magistracy was constituted in the other towns, as the colony expanded; and these magistrates judged all causes without the intervention of a jury. A jury was out of place in early New Haven, because there was no trace of such an institution in the Mosaic code. That code was the foundation of all law, and any crime punishable by death under the old Hebrew law was made capital in New Haven.² The famous “Blue Laws” of Connecticut and New Haven were a fiction of Samuel Peters in 1681, to satirize the severity of colonial statutes; but while they contained some pretended laws of a ridiculous character, it cannot be said that the spirit of them was much harsher than some enactments of the New Haven legislature.

The general court at its first session in November, 1639,³ true to its religious mission, and regarding the matter as of the first religious moment, took order for building a meeting-house, which was to be fifty feet square and to cost £500. All inhabitants were to be called on for voluntary pledges to support the Church. If any person refused, he should be assessed by the magistrates; and if payment were delayed, collection was to be made “as for debt.” No other Churches could be organized, except on approval of the magistrates and elders. No person, not a Church-member, could be admitted as a freeman of the colony. Absentees from Church

service were to be fined five shillings. “If any Christian (so-called) behave himself contemptuously toward the Word or the Minister,” he was to be punished in the discretion of the magistrates, according to the gravity of the offence. The punishment of heresy was also left to this magisterial discretion, and might be by fine, banishment, or “otherwise.” In order to protect the colony from improper additions, no stranger could be permitted to remain without special license from the magistrate, a rule similar to the domicile act of Massachusetts.¹

In 1643 New Haven entered into the New England Confederacy with Massachusetts, Plymouth, and Connecticut, of which sufficient has been noted in the sketches of the other colonies. But already another “combination” had been formed of much greater importance to New Haven. This was the merging into one “jurisdiction” with New Haven, Stamford, Guilford, and Yennicook. The peculiarity of this combination will be noted as something unique in colonial

action. In the other colonies, other settlements springing up within the territory of the original plantation became at once, without special action, integral members of the colony or commonwealth. With New Haven the case was different. Eaton and Davenport located their company on land outside of the other colonies and without a patent of their own, though their settlement infringed on the patent of Lords Brooke and Say and Sele. They claimed no territory beyond the lands immediately occupied by themselves. So when the towns of Guilford and Stamford were settled, each began as an independent settlement, under no other jurisdiction than that of the king. It very soon became apparent that such independence was not desirable, and that the towns should combine together under one colonial government. This took place accordingly, under the name of the first settled town, New Haven.

The advantages of this union were so obvious that in 1643 Milford desired admittance to the union, but on the application coming before the general court of the enlarged “jurisdiction” it was objected that Milford had six freemen, who were not Church-members.¹ This objection Milford met with the proposal of a compromise to the effect: 1st, that none of the six should be chosen for any office of the “combination,” nor vote in the election of magistrates of the combination; 2d, that hereafter none but Church-members should be admitted freemen of Milford; but 3d, the six were to have liberty to act in town business wherein the combination was not interested, and to vote for deputies to the general court, who should always be members of the Church. On this proposition Milford was admitted by a vote of the general court, “not foreseeing any danger in yielding to Milford with the aforesaid cautions.”

But the settlement of so important a matter was not to be left to the terms of a compromise, and at the first meeting of the general court after the admission of Milford, the

“Fundamental Agreement” was formally and solemnly readopted as binding upon all. In the next year, the code already enacted in New Haven was made that of the entire jurisdiction, the general court enacting: “That the judicial laws of God, as they were delivered by Moses, and as they are a fence to the moral law, being neither typical nor ceremonial, nor had any reference to Canaan, shall be accounted of moral equity and generally bind all offenders, and be a rule to all the courts in this jurisdiction in their proceedings against offenders, till they be branched out into particulars hereafter.”

The only occasion for the exhibition of a persecuting spirit was furnished by the Quakers. There is no reason to suppose that the pure theocracy of New Haven would have shown much tolerance for dissent from the established Church, or have suffered a Roman Catholic to remain in the colony. But with such the Records do not show the government to have been tried. But the Quaker alarm woke New Haven to a frenzy only second to that of Massachusetts. In 1656 the rumor of the sect’s approach brought out the law that “Quakers shall not be suffered in this jurisdiction.” Then the court was silent on the subject for two years.

Meanwhile some of the sect had ventured into the colony, and the general court in 1658 delivered itself of a batch of laws, not a whit less severe than those of the Bay, except in the item of capital punishment. Death was not among the penalties, but the enactments were sufficiently indicative of a frantic and intolerant state of mind. The law declared that “whoso shall bring Quakers, or other blasphemous hereticks, into this jurisdiction shall forfeit the sum of £50.” If any Quaker should come on business, he might be allowed to despatch it, attended by a guard, and was to be put out of the jurisdiction when the business was concluded. If he refused the guard, or attempted communication with the people, he was to be imprisoned, severely whipped, and kept at work for a term discretionary with the magistrate. If a Quaker,

having once suffered under this law, should come again, he was to be branded with the letter “H” on the hand and jailed. For a third offence the other hand should be branded, and the fourth offence was to be punished by boring the tongue with a hot iron. Quakers “arising from among ourselves” were to be treated as foreign Quakers. Any person bringing Quaker books was fined £5. Entertainment or concealment of a Quaker was punishable by a fine of twenty shillings for every hour’s entertainment or concealment. Any person defending the opinions of the Quakers should be fined for the first offence, £2; for the second offence, £4; and for the third offence, he should be imprisoned until it was convenient to send him out of the colony. “Lastly,” whoso reviled magistrates or ministers, “as it is usual with Quakers,” should be whipped or pay the sum of £5.

Under this comprehensive law a number of Quakers, some foreigners and others, who had “turned Quakers,” were prosecuted, whipped, imprisoned, and banished. But they were not many. Nor did many of the sect come into the colony; we may suppose, because of the greater attractions of New York and Boston, in the way of persecution.

Soon after this experience with the Quakers, began the movement which resulted in the loss of individual colonial existence, when New Haven was absorbed by Connecticut. As in Massachusetts, so in New Haven, there had grown a large party dissatisfied with the restriction of the franchise. A considerable number of the men were not members of the Church, and consequently were not allowed to vote, though taxed for purposes of both Church and State. They could not fail to contrast this exclusion from citizenship with the larger liberty of the neighboring colony, where personal character and taxable capacity were the conditions for the suffrage. The stricter element in New Haven considered the government of Connecticut a “Christless rule,” but were outnumbered by the party for union, which was composed not only of the non-members of the Church, but also of many

To Connecticut the annexing of the little colony of New Haven was a very desirable thing, as giving a natural boundary and adding to the colony’s population and resources. Thus, when Governor Winthrop applied to the king for a charter, the southern limit sought was the line of the sound from New Amsterdam to Rhode Island. We do not find that any formal resistance by New Haven to the project was made in London. “Many of the people were very willing for the junction. Mr. Davenport preached to them from Judges xxi. 3 (O Lord God of Israel, why is this come to pass in Israel, that there should be to-day one tribe lacking in Israel?); and that religion might better adopt the controversie, they fasted the people on the known presbyterian plan.”¹ But this opposition did not reach to strenuous protest to the king.

Nor is it probable that, had such been made, it could have had any influence on the result. For the king had a grudge against New Haven, the one of the colonies which had given a secure refuge to the regicides, Goffe and Whalley. Hardly were the festivities of the Restoration over, when Charles set himself to revenge his father’s death. The body of Cromwell was exhumed from Westminster Abbey,² and those of the dead judges Bradshaw and Ireton from their places of burial, that their heads might be set on Westminster Hall. The living judges fled, and of them the two named came to America, finding in New Haven shelter and concealment from all the search parties sent out by the king. This was remembered against the colony. Indeed, at the very moment of Winthrop’s application New Haven was shielding the fugitives, and it is not hard to imagine the king’s satisfaction in extinguishing the independence of the colony.³

On the union with Connecticut — a union accomplished, not by any compromise or agreement of the colonies, but by the king’s order — all the peculiarities of New Haven ceased to be. Its theocracy fell, the laws and authority of Connecticut took the place of its own, and religious profession no longer obtained as the condition of citizenship. Some there were who could not content themselves to remain under so changed circumstances. Davenport removed to Boston and succeeded Norton in the First Church.¹ Rev. A. Pierson with his people, who had come from Southold and settled at Branford, took themselves to New Jersey and made on the Passaic a new settlement, which they called New Ark. Their intent was to raise again the theocratic standard, “to restrict all political power to Church members,” and so once more illustrate what they considered the only correct principle of a pure government.² But this secession was but small, and the most of the New Haven people easily reconciled themselves to being lost in the Church and Commonwealth of Connecticut.

The first settlers of New Hampshire were exiles for conscience’ sake. As with Rhode Island and Connecticut, the colony owed its beginning to the religious intolerance of the Bay Puritans. John Wheelwright, banished from Massachusetts, repaired with a number of friends to the banks of the Piscataqua, and before the end of 1638 the exiles were joined by a sufficient number to make necessary the institution of the forms of government.³ They had bestowed themselves in the three settlements of Exeter, Hampton, and Dover, and in 1639 associated themselves in an “Agreement” for mutual government and support. The preamble to this

instrument, after asserting the subjection of the plantations to the king, proceeded: “We, his loyal subjects and brethren of the Church in Exeter, . . . considering the holy will of God and our own necessity, that we should not live without wholesome laws and civil government . . . do, in the name of Christ and in the sight of God, combine ourselves together to erect and set up among us such government as shall be, to our best discerning, agreeable to the will of God, . . . binding ourselves solemnly by the grace and help of Christ, and in His name and fear, to submit ourselves to such godly and Christian laws as are established in the realm of England to our best knowledge, and to all other such lawes which shall, upon good grounds, be made and enacted among us according to God, that we may live quietly and peaceably together in all godliness and honesty.”

The religious foundation of the new commonwealth was thus very positively declared, though the “Christian Lawes in the agreement did not copy the strict exclusiveness of Massachusetts. With a breadth of view not surprising in men who had gone through their experience, the settlers admitted the principle that civic privileges should not depend on the profession of religious faith, and that every respectable man among them should possess the franchise.

The breadth, however, had limitations. It is not correct to say that the founders intended “to reject in toto all that regarded the hierarchy and Church establishment.”¹ While there was no attempt to institute any hierarchical scrutiny and oppression, and no declaration of a theocratical design, yet the legislation for the Church and the system of tithes, assessed and collected under the civil law, belong to the idea of a religious establishment.

A necessitous concern at the beginning of any new settlement, not only on the part of the people but on that of the civil authorities, was a provision for the support of the Church: and in old grants of townships it was the usual

custom “to reserve one share, equal to that of any other grantee, for the first settled minister, as his own right; beside a parsonage lot.”¹ To the end of the colonial period, and beyond it, the government exercised authority in regard to the Church, both as to its support and as to the inroads of sects differing from the established order. There was never, with two exceptions, — though one of these, as the act of the royal governor, can hardly be cited against the colony, — any attempt at persecution, but at the same time New Hampshire was as fully tenacious of the legal forms of civil authority in religious matters as any other colony, not according in terms of law full liberty to all Christian sects until 1819. What is still more remarkable, New Hampshire alone, among all the states of the American Union, retains to this day in its constitution the old distinctions of Protestant and Christian, as against Romanist, Jew, and infidel, out of which in former days so many oppressions arose.

A short trial of the infant government in the new settlement disclosed the necessity of union with Massachusetts. As yet New Hampshire was too feeble to stand alone, and the union was formed by mutual agreement in 1641. The agreement contained “an extraordinary concession” by Massachusetts, that the franchise in New Hampshire should not be limited to Church membership. So notable a departure from the Bay policy can only be accounted for by a desire to extend colonial boundaries.²

From the time of the union until 1679 deputies from the New Hampshire towns were annually elected to the general court of Massachusetts, and, with the one exception noted, the laws of the latter colony obtained in both. By reason of this union the annals of New Hampshire were stained with the single record of persecution which can be charged against

the colony. This was the shameful treatment of three Quaker women in 1659.¹ Under the furious law of Massachusetts the women, Anna Colman, Mary Tompkins, and Alice Ambrose, were condemned to be “whipped from town to town out of the province.” The process was begun at Dover, whence the victims were driven under the lash, “through dirt and snow half-a-leg deep,” to Hampton and thence to Salisbury. There Walter Barefoot, a magistrate, moved by shame and pity, persuaded the constable to commit the prisoners to him, when he at once released them. As for the women, they returned to Dover and do not seem to have been again molested.²

Meanwhile the colony increased. Other towns were settled, chief among which was Portsmouth. Here the first minister was Joshua Moody, destined to persecution and celebrity. By an ordinance of the town, “to encourage him, those who slept, or took tobacco on the Lord’s day during service, were doomed to the cage.”³

In 1679 the union with Massachusetts was dissolved by royal order, partly because of the growth of New Hampshire, but more because of the king’s desire to cripple and annoy the Bay colony. New Hampshire was made a distinct province under the royal charter or “Commission.” The establishment of the separate government was under the same commissioners, whose errand brought so much disturbance to other New England colonies. In New Hampshire their offices were welcomed by the people, who had desired independence on the Bay. For the new province the instructions to the commissioners in regard to religious matters were identical with those given for the other colonies, viz.: “We

do hereby require and command that liberty of conscience shall be allowed unto all protestants; and that such especially, as shall be conformable to the rites of the Church of England, shall be particularly countenanced and encouraged.”¹

The first provincial assembly, in 1680, settled the right of the franchise by a law that “all Englishmen, being Protestants, settled Inhabitants and freeholders, of the age of twenty four years, not viceous in life, but honest, and such as have £20 Ratable estate,” should be admitted freemen of the commonwealth. Thus was reënacted the severance of civil and religious privileges. The only religious qualification for a freeman was Protestantism — an exceedingly illiberal restriction in our day, but in 1680 meaning considerable breadth. It is well to note also that the restrictive word “Protestant” wrought no individual wrong, and acted simply as a deterrent of any Romanist immigration. For a hundred years no member of the Church of Rome furnished occasion to question the disposition of New Hampshire. But it is no injustice to suppose that in 1680 men of that faith might have been desired to leave the province. Its citizens shared with their brethren elsewhere a horror of Romanism, and the proclamation for a fast-day in 1681 called upon the people to implore “the divine favor,” as for divers blessings, so “against the Popish party throughout the world.”²

The mind of the new government on the question of Church support found early illustration. It appears that some of the people were disposed to resent the interference of the magistrate with religious affairs, and in 1681 the constable at Dover reported to the council that many had refused to pay rates for the minister, on the ground that the king’s commission guaranteed liberty of conscience, and desired directions as to his duty in the case. The answer to this

inquiry was given by a law of the next year, to the effect that the town officers should assess the minister’s support on all the taxpayers of the town, and should collect all arrearages by legal process. Refusal to pay was made punishable by imprisonment, until the rates were paid or good security were given.¹

By a law of 1680, “contempt of God’s word or of the ministers” was made punishable by fine or imprisonment; and in 1681 Robert Briney, a servant or apprentice, for absence from Church services, was sentenced to nine stripes, with suspension of sentence on future good behavior.²

In 1682 Governor Cranfield arrived with royal instructions, which repeated the language of the charter in regard to religious matters, the scope of which he endeavored to extend far beyond its legitimate construction. Cranfield is described as a most unworthy character — “arbitrary, needy, and rapacious. He made no secret of his object . . . of bettering his condition.” A letter of William Vaughan — than whom there was no better man in the colony, and who himself fell under the displeasure of Cranfield for resisting his oppressive schemes — says of him, “He came for money, and money he will get.”³

Our only concern with the governor is his absurd and oppressive attempt to force the Church of England on the colony as an establishment. This was purely arbitrary, and without any authorization from the English government, which had never gone beyond the command, that, while allowing “liberty of conscience to all Protestants,” such as were of the Church of England should be “particularly countenanced and encouraged.” In his orders the governor appealed to “his Majesty’s letters sent the Massachusetts,” as though these contained an ordinance for establishment. He must have presumed on the supposed ignorance of the

New Hampshire clergy, for these letters to the Bay contained no prescriptions beyond those already noted.¹

With the exceptions of Andros, Fletcher, and Cornbury in New York, no other royal governor ventured such lengths in the assertion of ecclesiastical power. By an official order Cranfield undertook to change the character of the colonial Churches and assert the supremacy of the Church of England. This order was issued in December of 1683, and required all ministers of the province, after the first of January following, to admit to the Lord’s Supper all persons of suitable age and not vicious, to admit the children of such persons to baptism, and, if any one should desire the sacraments according to the rites of the Church of England, to use those rites for the administration. If any minister should refuse to obey this order, he was to be deprived of his salary, and his people were to be freed from the payment of tithes.

The ministers paid no attention to this order, whereupon the irate governor summoned “all the ministers in New Hampshire to attend, the Monday following, to give their reasons why they did not administer the sacrament according to his Majesty’s letters to the Massachusetts and the statutes (English) in that case.” The result of this proposed hearing, if it ever took place, is not recorded, but the governor determined to bring matters to a head in the most summary fashion and selected Moody of Portsmouth, the most prominent of the clergy, as the object of his special wrath.

To Moody he issued a special command, that on the next Lord’s day he read in his meeting-house the order for conformity. To this command Moody paid no more attention than to the original order, and conducted his service as before. Then, under date of January 15, 1683/4, it is recorded that “James Sherlock gives Moody notice in writing, that Cranfield, Barefoot, Chamberlain, and Hincks would receive

the sacrament from his hands, according to the liturgy of the Church of England, the next Sunday.”

This precise demand was met by Moody with a distinct refusal to obey, whereupon an immediate order was issued for his arrest, “for administering the sacrament contrary to the laws of England, and refusing to administer according to the rites of the Church of England.” The case was tried before Barefoot, as justice, and Moody pleaded in his own defence, showing that the laws of England forbade the use of the rites of the Church of England to those not ordained in that Church, and that he could not use the English liturgy without violating the law, and “besides, these statutes were not made for these places, the known end of their removal hither being that they might enjoy liberty in these foreign plantations, and our commission granting liberty of conscience.”

The plea was just, but the court, controlled by the governor, set it aside and committed Moody to prison, where he was detained for three months. One account states that he was not released until he promised to leave the province. If this is correct, then it was during the term of imprisonment that occasion was given for the following curious record: “Mr. Joshua Moody, being to take a journey out of the Province, was forced to give a recognizance of £200 to return in three weeks, if alive and well.”¹ Not long after this experience Moody left Portsmouth and settled in Boston, where he made himself conspicuous by opposing the witchcraft persecution, comforting the afflicted, and helping some to escape, to the great wrath of Cotton Mather.²

So ended the great persecution in New Hampshire, though it would appear that other ministers were subjected to annoyances, for they joined in complaint against Cranfield, that “the Ministers, contrary to his Majesty’s commission, which grants liberty of conscience to all Protestants, have

their dues withheld from them, even those due before Mr. Cranfield came, and are threatened with 6 mo^s imprisonment for not administering the sacrament according to the liturgy of the Chh. of England.” This and other complaints against Cranfield’s course had effect in England. The governor was recalled, and the New Hampshire Churches suffered from no more attempts to convert them to Episcopacy.

In the subsequent years various enactments confirmed the Church, under the old Congregational order, as a town establishment.¹ The laws of 1692, 1702, 1714 ordained that, the freeholders in each town should choose the minister for the town Church and agree with him for salary, that the selectmen should assess this salary upon the town, and the constable should collect it: “Provided, that this act do not at all interfere with their Majesties’ grace and favor in allowing their Subjects liberty of conscience: nor shall any person, under pretence of being of a different persuasion, be excused from paying towards the support of the settled Minister or Ministers of the Towne, but only such as are conscientiously so and constantly attend the publick worship of God on the Lord’s day according to their own persuasion.” The toleration in this act was more complete than that of the Five-Mile Act of Massachusetts and the similar law in Connecticut. By these statutes the constable collected rates from all, applying those from dissenters to the support of their own ministers, thus making all the Churches a concern of the state. In New Hampshire the law made no provision for the payment of any rates by dissenters, nor concerned itself with the support of dissenting ministers. Those who were excused from the town rates, were at liberty to arrange for and collect the salary of their minister as pleased themselves. But exemption was not so easily obtained in New Hampshire. A dissenter claiming it was compelled to produce proof of conscientious dissent, of regular attendance on

public worship, and of payment for its support, while “at every point his evidence was contested by the State.”

Beyond this general arrangement of system there was not much legislation on Church matters. Occasionally — departing from the town system — the legislature organized a Church, or divided a parish. In 1724 a bill attempted amendment as to the method of choosing ministers, the intent of which was to give the initiative to the Church itself. The Church was first to choose, and their choice to be submitted to the town. If the majority of freeholders accepted this nominee, he was to be minister. In case of disagreement, the matter must be “Decided by the next three or five adjacent Churches.” The bill was deferred to the next session and never became a law, so that its only value here is as an indication of growing sentiment toward the autonomy of the Church.

In 1725 the legislature granted relief in certain matters to the people of Sandy Beach, appending to the grant the condition, “that they are obliged to Maintain an able Orthodox Minister of the Gospell at their own Charges.”

The colonial action in regard to tests varied.¹ Previously to 1696 the oath required was simply one of allegiance and fidelity, but in that year the “horrid and detestable conspiracy” against William and Mary moved the legislature to pass a law, requiring “all male persons to take the oath appointed by Act of Parliament.” This act was the toleration act of 1689, which imposed, in addition to the oath of allegiance and supremacy, a “Declaration” against the pope and all peculiar doctrines of the Roman Church. This requirement was simply the demand of transient excitement, and it does not appear that the oath continued to be exacted, even from office-holders. The legislature of 1727 formulated an oath for office-holders, which was very precise in its loyalty to the House of Hanover and its abjuration of the Stuarts, but made no declaration of faith or against popery. Again in 1752, in

the time of the French war, when there was a new spasm of fear of popery widespread in the colonies, the legislature itself took “the Oaths and Declaration appointed by Act of Parliament,” but did not impose them on the people at large or on other office-holders. One other item remains, not of legislation, but of action illustrating the prevalent thought that government should concern itself with religious matters.¹ In 1725 the Rev. Hugh Adams, having composed a religious treatise, sent the manuscript to the governor, with the request that the legislature take order for its publication. That body, to whom the governor sent the application, finding that the treatise was “on controversial points of Divinity,” voted, that “the Gospell Ministers of this Province take the manuscript into consideration and report, that the Publication thereof may be countenanced or discouraged, and the said manuscript be disposed of as may be most for the Glory of God.” The report of the ministers represented that the work was full of errors of doctrine and was “unworthy of the least countenance”; whereupon the legislature thanked the ministers, and ordered that “the manuscript be lodged in the Secretary’s office, and no one shall have a copy!” Thus the lawmakers were conservative and dreaded the introduction of heresy. One can regret the nature of the treatise and report, for the mere desire of seeing what the action would have been on a favorable verdict from the examining ministers. A religious treatise published by a legislature would have been something altogether unique. Our New Hampshire chapter is thus necessarily short. Religious matters in the province knew little change. The people were mostly of one faith, while the spirit of intolerance was never a popular sentiment among them. With their Church established as a town institution they went into the revolutionary period; and what changes were subsequently made will be noted in the chapter on Final Settlements.

Author:	Cobb, Sanford
Title:	The Rise of Religious Liberty in America: A History
Citation:	New York: MacMillan, 1902
Subdivision:	Chapter V: The Puritan Establishments
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