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[1628 A.D.] The English Puritans, for years past. had been growing more and more uneasy. Many clergymen of that cast had been silenced or deprived of their cures for nonconformity, and the present fashion of colonisation in America, as well as the example of the Plymouth colony, had suggested the idea of a Puritan refuge across the Atlantic. With this view, John Humphrey, a brother-in- · law of the earl of Lincoln, John Endicott, and four others, gentlemen of Dorchester, obtained, at White's instigation, from the council for New England, a grant of the coast between Laconia on the one side, and the Plymouth patent on the other, including the whole of Massachusetts Bay. This grant of March 19th, 1628, extended westward to the Pacific, coterminate in that direction with the New England patent itself; north and south it was bounded by two parallel lines, the one three miles north of "any and every part" of the Merrimac, the other three miles south of "any and every part" of Charles river, one of the streams flowing into the head of Massachusetts Bay, and so named on Smith's map of New England. Part of this tract on the seacoast had been conveyed, in March, 1622, to Mason, under the name of Mariana, and another smaller portion to Robert Gorges, the late lieutenant general. He was dead; but his brother and heir had conveyed a part of this tract to Oldham, the exile from Plymouth, who had established himself as an Indian trader at Nantasket. The rest had been transferred to Sir William Brereton, who about this time sent over indented servants, and began a settlement, probably at Winnissimet, now Chelsea. The earl of Warwick appears also to have had a claim to this territory, or a part of it; but, whatever it was he presently relinquished it to the Massachusetts patentees. Those patentees, indeed, for some reason not very apparent, seem to have regarded all the previous grants as void against them.

ENDICOTT'S ARRIVAL (1628 A.D.)

New partners were soon found. John Winthrop, of Groton, in Suffolk, educated a lawyer, a gentleman of handsome landed property, Sir Richard Saltonstall, and other wealthy Puritans in London and the vicinity, became interested in the enterprise; and, to prepare the way for a larger migration, John Endicott whom Edward Johnsonff calls, "a fit instrument to begin this wilderness work," indefatigable, undaunted, austere, yet of a "sociable and cheerful spirit," was despatched at once, with sixty or seventy people, to make the commencement of a settlement. Welcomed at Naumkeag by Conant, September 14th, 1628, in conformity with his instructions, he soon despatched a small party by land, to explore the head of Massachusetts Bay, where it had been resolved to plant the principal colony. The peninsula between Charles and Mystic rivers, already known as Charleton or Charlestown, was found in possession of one Walford, a smith. The opposite peninsula of Shawmut was occupied by another lonely settler, one Blackstone, an eccentric non-conforming clergyman. The island, now East Boston, was inhabited by Samuel Maverick, an Indian trader, who had a little fort there, with two small cannon. On Thompson's Island, more to the south, dwelt David Thompson, already mentioned as one of the original settlers on the Piscataqua. Oldham still had an establishment at Nantasket, though at this moment he was in England, negotiating with the Massachusetts Company. There were a few settlers, it is probabie, at Winnissimet, servants of Brereton; some, also, at Wissagusset, and a few more at Mount Wollaston.

Endicott sent home loud complaints of these "old planters," especially in relation to the Indian trade, which formed their chief business. They came,

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[1629 A.D.]

in fact, in direct conflict with the new patentees, who claimed an exclusive right of Indian traffic within the limits of their patent. The importance of this trade was very much exaggerated. There dwelt on the shores of Massachusetts Bay only four or five petty sachems, each with some thirty or forty warriors. Yet, at Endicott's suggestion, the company obtained a renewal of the royal proclamation of 1622 against irregular trading with the Indians.

New associates, meanwhile, had joined the company in England, including several from Boston and its vicinity, in Lincolnshire; among them, Isaac Johnson, another brother-in-law of the earl of Lincoln; Thomas Dudley, the earl's steward; Simon Bradstreet, steward to the dowager countess of Warwick, and son-in-law of Dudley; William Coddington, a wealthy merchant of Boston; and Richard Bellingham, bred a lawyer-all conspicuous in the subsequent history of Massachusetts. A very warm interest was taken in the enterprise by the Lady Lincoln, a daughter of Lord Say, a conspicuous Puritan nobleman, himself active, as we shall presently see, in American colonisations. The company, thus re-enforced, and sustained by money and influential friends, easily obtained a royal charter confirming their grant, and superadding powers of government. This charter was modelled after that of the late Virginia Company, vacated by Quo Warranto five years before.y

BANCROFT ON THE CHARTER AND FIRST SETTLERS OF MASSACHUSETTS

The patent for the company of the Massachusetts Bay passed the seals, March 4th, 1629; a few days only before Charles I, in a public state-paper, avowed his design of governing without a parliament. The charter, which bears the signature of Charles I, and which was cherished for more than half a century as the most precious boon, established a corporation, like other corporations within the realm. The associates were constituted a body politic by the name of "The Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England." The administration of its affairs was entrusted to a governor, deputy, and eighteen assistants, who were to be annually elected by the-stockholders, or members of the corporation.

Four times a year, or oftener if desired, a general assembly of the freemen was to be held; and to these assemblies, which were invested with the necessary powers of legislation, inquest, and superintendence, the most important affairs were referred. No provision required the assent of the king to render the acts of the body valid; in his eye it was but a trading corporation, not a civil government; its doings were esteemed as indifferent as those of any guild or company in England; and if powers of jurisdiction in America were conceded, it was only from the nature of the business in which the stockholders were to engage. For the charter designedly granted great facilities for colonisation. It empowered, but it did not require, the governor to administer the oaths of supremacy and allegiance; yet the charter, according to the strict rules of legal interpretation, was far from conceding to the patentees the privilege of freedom of worship. Not a single line alludes to such a purpose; nor can it be implied by a reasonable construction from any clause. The omission of an express guaranty left religious liberty unprovided for and unprotected. The express concession of power to administer the oath of supremacy, demonstrates that universal religious toleration was not designed; and the freemen of the corporation, it should be remembered, were not at that time separatists. Even Higginson, and Hooker, and Cotton were still ministers of the Church of England; nor could the patentees foresee, nor the English government anticipate, how wide a departure from English usages would grow out of the emi

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[1629 A.D.] gration of Puritans to America. Episcopacy had no motive to emigrate; it was Puritanism, almost alone, that emigrated; and freedom of Puritan worship was necessarily the purpose and the result of the colony. If the privilege could not have been established as a legal right, it followed so clearly from the facts, that, in 1662, the sovereign of England, probably with the assent and at the instance of Clarendon, declared, "the principle and foundation of the charter of Massachusetts to be the freedom of liberty of conscience."

Massachusetts was not erected into a province, to be governed by laws of its own enactment; it was reserved for the corporation to decide what degree of civil rights its colonists should enjoy. The charter on which the freemen of Massachusetts succeeded in erecting a system of independent representative liberty, did not secure to them a single privilege of self government; but left them, as the Virginians had been left, without one valuable franchise, at the mercy of a corporation within the realm. This was so evident, that some of those who had already emigrated clamoured that they were become slaves. It was perhaps implied, though it was not expressly required, that the affairs of the company should be administered in England; yet the place for holding the courts was not specially appointed. What if the corporation should vote the emigrants to be freemen, and call a meeting beyond the Atlantic? What if the governor, deputy, assistants, and freemen, should themselves emigrate, and thus break down the distinction between the colony and the corporation? The history of Massachusetts is the counterpart to that of Virginia; the latter obtained its greatest liberty by the abrogation of the charter of its company; the former by a transfer of its charter, and a daring construction of its powers by the successors of the original patentees.

The charter had been granted in March; in April, preparations were hastening for the embarkation of new emigrants. The government which was now established for Massachusetts merits commemoration, though it was never duly organised. It was to consist of a governor and counsellors, of whom eight out of the thirteen were appointed by the corporation in England; three were to be named by these eight; and, as it was said, to remove all grounds of discontent, the choice of the remaining two counsellors was granted to the colonists as a liberal boon. The board, when thus constituted, was invested with all the powers of legislation, justice, and administration. Such was the inauspicious dawn of civil and religious liberty on the bay of Massachusetts. Benevolent instructions to Endicott were at the same time issued. any of the salvages"-such were the orders long and uniformly followed in all changes of government, and placed on record more than half a century before William Penn proclaimed the principles of peace on the borders of the Delaware - "pretend right of inheritance to all or any part of the lands granted in our patent, we pray you endeavour to purchase their tytle, that we may avoid the least scruple of intrusion." "Particularly publish, that no wrong or injury be offered to the natives."

"If

The departure of the fleet for America was now anxiously desired. The colonists were to be cheered by the presence of religious teachers; and the excellent and truly catholic Francis Higginson, an eminent non-conforming minister, receiving an invitation to conduct the emigrants, esteemed it as a call from heaven. The propagation of the gospel among the heathen was earnestly desired; in pious sincerity they resolved if possible to redeem these wrecks of human nature; the colony seal was an Indian, erect, with an arrow in his right hand, and the motto, "Come over and help us." The company of emigrants was winnowed before sailing; and servants of ill life were discharged. "No idle drone may live amongst us," was the spirit as well as the law of the

[1629 A.D.]

dauntless community, which was to turn the sterility of New England into a cluster of wealthy states.

It was in the last days of June, that the little band of two hundred arrived at Salem, where the "corruptions of the English church" were never to be planted, and where a new "reformation" was to be reduced to practice. They found neither church nor town; eight or ten pitiful hovels, one more stately tenement for the governor, and a few cornfields, were the only proofs that they had been preceded by their countrymen. The whole body of old and new planters now amounted to three hundred; of whom one third joined the infant settlement at Charlestown.

To the great European world the few tenants of the mud hovels and log cabins at Salem might appear too insignificant to merit notice; to themselves they were as the chosen emissaries of God; outcasts from England, yet favourites with heaven; destitute of security, of convenient food and shelter, and yet blessed beyond all mankind, for they were the depositaries of the purest truth, and the selected instruments to kindle in the wilderness the beacon of pure religion, of which the undying light should not only penetrate the wigwams of the heathen, but spread its benignant beams across the darkness of the whole civilised world. The emigrants were not so much a body politic, as a church in the wilderness. An entire separation was made between state and church July 20th; religious worship was established on the basis of the independence of each separate religious community; all officers of the church were elected by its members; and these rigid Calvinists, of whose rude intolerance the world has been filled with calumnies, subscribed a covenant, cherishing, it is true, the severest virtues, but without one tinge of fanaticism. It was an act of piety, not of study; it favored virtue, not superstition; inquiry, and not submission. The people were enthusiasts, but not bigots. The church was self-constituted. It did not ask the assent of the king, or recognise him as its head; its officers were set apart and ordained among themselves; it used no liturgy; it rejected unnecessary ceremonies, and reduced the simplicity of Calvin to a still plainer standard. The motives which controlled their decisions were so deeply seated in the very character of their party, that the doctrine and discipline then established at Salem remained the rule of Puritans in New England.

There existed, even in this little company, a few individuals to whom the new system was unexpected; and in John and Samuel Browne, they found able leaders. They declared their dissent from the church of Higginson; and, at every risk of union and tranquillity, they insisted upon the use of the English liturgy. But should the emigrants give up the very purpose for which they had crossed the Atlantic? Should not even the forests of Massachusetts be safe against the intrusion of the hierarchy, before which they had fled? Finding it to be a vain attempt to persuade the Brownes to relinquish their resolute opposition, and believing that their speeches tended to produce disorder and dangerous feuds, Endicott sent them to England in the returning ships; and faction, deprived of its leaders, died away.

Winter brought disease and the sufferings incident to early settlements. Above eighty, almost half of the emigrants, died before spring. Higginson himself fell a victim to a hectic fever.

TRANSFER OF THE CHARTER TO MASSACHUSETTS

On the suggestion of the generous Matthew Cradock, the governor of the company, it was proposed July 28th, 1629, that the charter should be trans

[1629 A.D.] ferred to those of the freemen who should themselves inhabit the colony; and the question immediately became the most important that could be debated. An agreement was at once formed at Cambridge in England, between men of fortune and education, that they would themselves embark for America, if, before the last of September, the whole government should be legally transferred to them and the other freemen of the company, who should inhabit the plantation. The plan was sufficient to excite in the family of John Winthrop, and in many of the purest men in England, the desire to emigrate. "I shall call that my country," said the younger Winthrop to his father, "where I may most glorify God, and enjoy the presence of my dearest friends." September 1st, 1629, it was with general consent declared, that the government and the

patent should be transferred beyond the Atlantic, and settled in New England.

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The

This vote was simply a decision of the question where the future meetings of the company should be held; and yet it effectually changed a commercial corporation into an independent provincial government. measure was believed to be consistent with the principles of the charter. The corporation did not sell itself; the corporation emigrated. They could not assign the patent; but they could call a legal meeting at London or on board ship in an English harbour; and why not in the port of Salem as well as at the Isle of Wight? in a cabin or under a tree at Charlestown, as well as at the house of Goffe in London? The propriety of the measure, in a juridical point of view, has been questioned. Similar patents were granted by the Long Parliament and Charles II, to be exercised in Rhode Island and Connecticut; Baltimore and Penn long resided on their domains; and the Pilgrims brought with them a patent, which, it is true, had not passed the seals, but which was invalid for a very different reason. But, whatever may be thought of the legality of the transfer of the charter, it certainly conferred no new franchises or power on the emigrants, unless they were already members of the company; it admitted no new freemen; it gave to Massachusetts a present government; but the corporation, though it was to meet in New England, retained in its full integrity the chartered right of admitting freemen according to its pleasure. The manner in which that power was to be exercised would control the early political character of Massachusetts.

JOHN WINTHROP (1587-1649)

THE EMIGRATION WITH JOHN WINTHROP (1629 A.D.)

At the court convened, October 20th, for the purpose of appointing officers who would emigrate, John Winthrop, a man approved for piety, liberality,

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