The Fathers of New England Part 2

New England was a frontier land far removed from the older civilizations, and its people were always restive under restraint and convention. They were in the main men and women of good sense, sobriety, and thrift, who worked hard, squandered nothing, feared G.o.d, and honored the King, but the equipment they brought with them to America was insufficient at best and had to be replaced, as the years wore on, from resources developed on New England soil.

CHAPTER V

AN ATTEMPT AT COLONIAL UNION

The men who controlled the destinies of New England were deeply concerned not only with preserving its faith but also with guarding its rights and liberties as they defined them, and reverentially preserving the letter of its charters. For men who wished to sever their connection with England and to disregard English law and precedent as much as possible, they displayed a remarkable amount of respect for the doc.u.ments that emanated from the British Chancery. In fact, however, they valued these grants and charters, not as expressions of royal favor, but as bulwarks against royal encroachment and outside interference, and in accepting such privileges as were conferred by their charters, they recognized no duty to be performed for the common mother, no obligations resting upon themselves to consider the welfare of England or to cooperate in her behalf.

The thoughts of these men were of themselves, their faith, and their problems of existence. The strongest ties were those that held together the people of a town, closely knit in the bond of a civil and religious covenant. Next above these were the ties of the colony, with its general court or a.s.sembly composed of representatives of the towns, its governor and other officials elected by the freemen, and its laws pa.s.sed by the a.s.sembly for the benefit and well-being of all. Higher still was the loose bond of confederation that was fas.h.i.+oned in 1643 for the maintenance of order, peace, and security, in the form of a league of colonies. Highest, but weakest of all, was the bond that united them to England, recognized in sentiment but carrying with it no reciprocal obligations, either legal or otherwise. To the average inhabitant of New England, the mother country was merely the land from which he had come, the home to which he might or might not return. He had practically no knowledge of England's plans or policy, no comprehension of her purpose toward her colonies or the place of the colonies in her own scheme of expansion. He was absorbed in his own affairs, not in those of England; in the commands of G.o.d, not in those of the King; and in the dangers which surrounded him from the foes of the frontier, not in those which confronted England in her relations with her continental rivals. He was dominated by his instinct for self-government and by his compelling fear of the Stuarts and all that they represented. Even during the period of the Commonwealth and the Protectorate, England was three thousand miles away, appeal to her was difficult and costly, and the English brethren were not always as sympathetic as they might have been with the aims and methods of their co-religionists.

This very isolation from the mother country, at a time when the New Englanders were pus.h.i.+ng their fur-trading activities into the regions claimed by the Dutch and the French, rendered some sort of united action necessary and desirable. The settlers were of one stock and one purpose.

Despite bickerings and disputes, they shared a common desire to enjoy the liberties of the Christian religion and to obtain from the new country into which they had come both subsistence and profit. The determination to open up trading posts on the Pen.o.bscot, the Delaware, and the Hudson, and to utilize all waters for their fisheries brought them into conflict with their rivals, at New Amsterdam and in Nova Scotia, and made it imperative, should any one colony--Plymouth, Ma.s.sachusetts, Connecticut, or New Haven--attempt to pursue its plans alone, for all to band together in its support. The troubles already encountered with the Dutch on the Delaware and the Connecticut and with the French in Maine, in the compet.i.tion for the fur trade of the interior, had rendered the situation acute and led, very early, to the proposal that a combination be effected.

But it was not until 1643 that anything was accomplished. In May of that year, at the suggestion of Connecticut and New Haven, commissioners from these colonies, and from Ma.s.sachusetts and Plymouth also, met at Boston and drafted a body of articles for a consociation or confederation to be known as the United Colonies of New England, a form of union which found a precedent in the federation of the Netherlands and corresponded in the political field to the consociation of churches in the ecclesiastical.

Maine was not asked because, as a province belonging to Gorges, the people there (to quote from Winthrop's _Journal_) "ran a different course from the other colonies, both in their ministry and civil administration, ... had lately made Acomenticus (a poor village) a corporation, and had made a taylor their mayor, and had entertained one Hull, an excommunicated person and very contentious, for their minister." Rhode Island, as a seat of separatism and heresy, was not invited and perhaps not even considered. For managing the affairs of the confederation, the main objects of which were friends.h.i.+p and amity, protection and defense, advice and succor, and the preservation of the truth and purity of the Gospel, eight commissioners were provided, to be chosen by the a.s.semblies of the colonies and to represent the colonies as independent political units. Meetings were to be held once a year in one or other of the leading towns and a full record was to be kept of the business done. The board thus established never did more than make recommendations and offer advice, as it had no authority to execute any of the plans that it might make; and although the records of its meetings are lengthy and give evidence of elaborate discussion of important matters, the results of its deliberations cannot be said to be particularly significant.

The commissioners dealt with a number of local disputes of no great moment and considered certain internal difficulties that threatened to disturb the friendly intercourse among the colonies. For instance, Connecticut had levied tolls at Saybrook on vessels going up the Connecticut River to Springfield, and Ma.s.sachusetts had retaliated by laying duties on goods from other colonies entering her ports. Under pressure from the commissioners both the colonies receded from their positions. Again, the commissioners recommended the granting of aid to Harvard College, and that inst.i.tution consequently received from Connecticut and New Haven annually for many years a regular allowance, in return for which it presented the Connecticut colony with nearly sixty graduates in the ensuing half-century well equipped to combat lat.i.tudinarianism and heresy. The commissioners fulfilled their obligation as guardians of the purity of the Gospel, both in their support of the synod of 1646-1648 and in their strenuous efforts to check the increase of religious discontent due to the narrow definition of church members.h.i.+p--efforts which eventually resulted in that "illogical compromise," the Half-Way Covenant. They recommended the driving out of "Quakers, Ranters, and other Herritics of that nature,"

and urged that the true Gospel might be spread among the Indians. They upheld the work of the Society for the Promoting and Propagating of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in New England, and they directed and guided the labors of its missionaries, most notable of whom was the famous John Eliot, apostle to the Indians and translator of the Bible into their language.

The most important business of the confederation concerned the defense of New England against the Indians, the Dutch, and the French. The Indians were an ever-present menace, near and far; the Dutch disputed the English claims all the way from New Amsterdam to Narragansett Bay, and resented the attempts already made to encroach upon their trading grounds; and the French at this time were strenuously denying the right of the English, particularly those of Plymouth, to establish trading-posts at Machias and on the Pen.o.bscot, and were laying claim to all the Nova Scotian territory as far west as the Pen.o.bscot.

Though the French, in their effort to drive out all the English settlers east of Pemaquid in Maine, had destroyed two Plymouth posts in that region, the commissioners were called upon to decide not so much what should be done about this act of aggression, as which of the claimants among the French themselves it was wiser for the colonies to support. A certain Charles de la Tour had been commissioned by the Governor-General of Acadia or Nova Scotia as lieutenant of the region east of the St.

Croix, and another, Charles de Menou, Sieur d'Aulnay-Charnise, as lieutenant of the region between the St. Croix and the Pen.o.bscot. When the Governor-General died in 1635, a contest for the governors.h.i.+p took place between these two men, and not unnaturally volunteers from Ma.s.sachusetts aided La Tour, whose original jurisdiction was farthest removed from their colony. Trade on these northeastern coasts was deemed essential to the prosperity of the New Englanders, and it was considered of great importance to make no mistake in backing the wrong claimant.

D'Aulnay, or more correctly Aulnay, had been partly responsible for the attack on the Plymouth trading-posts, but, on the other hand, he had the stronger t.i.tle; and Ma.s.sachusetts was a good deal perplexed as to what course to pursue. In 1644, Aulnay sent a commissioner to Boston, who conversed with Governor Endecott in French and with the rest of the magistrates in Latin and endeavored to arrange terms of peace. Two years later the same commissioner came again, with two others, and was cordially entertained with "wine and sweetmeats." The matter was referred to the commissioners of the United Colonies, who decided, with considerable shrewdness, that the volunteers in aiding La Tour had acted efficiently but not wisely; and consequently a compromise was reached.

Aulnay's commissioners abated their claims for damages, and Governor Winthrop consented to send "a small present" to Aulnay in lieu of compensation. The present was "a fair new sedan (worth," says Winthrop, "forty or fifty pounds, where it was made, but of no use to us)," having been part of some Spanish booty taken in the West Indies and presented to the Governor. So final peace was made at no expense to the colony; and later, after Aulnay's death in 1650, La Tour married the widow and came to his own in Nova Scotia.

The troubles with the Dutch were not so easily settled. England had never acknowledged the Dutch claim to New Amsterdam, and the New England Council in making its grants had paid no attention to the Dutch occupation. Though trade had been carried on and early relations had been on the whole amicable, yet, after Connecticut's overthrow of the Pequots in 1637 and the opening of the territory to settlement, the founding of towns as far west as Stamford and Greenwich had rendered acute the conflict of t.i.tles. There was no western limit to the English claims, and, as the colonists were perfectly willing to accept Sir William Boswell's advice to "crowd on, crowding the Dutch out of those places which they have occupied, without hostility or any act of violence," a collision was bound to come. The Dutch, who in their turn were not abating a jot of their claims, had already destroyed a New Haven settlement on the Delaware, and had a.s.serted rights of jurisdiction even in New Haven harbor, by seizing there one of their own s.h.i.+ps charged with evading the laws of New Amsterdam. Peter Stuyvesant, the Dutch Governor, famous for his short temper and mythical silver leg, visited Hartford in 1650, and negotiated with the commissioners of the United Colonies a treaty drawing the boundary line from the west side of Greenwich Bay northward twenty miles. But this treaty, though ratified by the States General of Holland, was never ratified by England, and, when two years later war between the two countries broke out overseas, the question of an attack on New Amsterdam was taken up and debated with such heat as nearly to disrupt the Confederation. The absolute refusal of Ma.s.sachusetts to enter on such an undertaking so prolonged the discussion that the war was over before a decision was reached; but Connecticut seized the Dutch lands at Hartford, and Roger Ludlow, who had moved to Fairfield from Windsor after 1640, began an abortive military campaign of his own. The situation remained unchanged as long as the Dutch held New Netherland, and the region between Greenwich and the Bronx continued to be what it had been from the beginning of settlement, a territory occupied only by Indians and a few straggling emigrants. There the unfortunate Anne Hutchinson with her family was ma.s.sacred by the Indians in 1643.

The New England Confederation performed the most important part of its work during the first twenty years of its existence, for although it lasted nominally till 1684, it ceased to be effective after 1664, and was of little weight in New England history after the restoration of the Stuarts. Owing to the fact that it had been formed without any authority from England, the Confederation was never recognized by the Government there, and with the return of the monarchy it survived chiefly as an occasional committee meeting for debate and advice.

CHAPTER VI

WINNING THE CHARTERS

The accession of Charles II to the throne of England provoked a crisis in the affairs of the Puritans and gave rise to many problems that the New Englanders had not antic.i.p.ated and did not know how to solve. With a Stuart again in control, there were many questions that might be easily asked but less easily answered. Except for Ma.s.sachusetts and Plymouth, not a settlement had a legal t.i.tle to its soil; and except for Ma.s.sachusetts, not one had ever received a sufficient warrant for the government which it had set up. Naturally, therefore, there was disquietude in Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Haven; and even Ma.s.sachusetts, b.u.t.tressed as she was, feared lest the King might object to many of the things she had done. Entrenched behind her charter and aware of her superiority in wealth, territory, and population, she had taken the leaders.h.i.+p in New England and had used her opportunity to intimidate her neighbors. Except for New Haven, not a colony or group of settlements but had felt the weight of her claims. Plymouth and Connecticut had protested against her demands; the Narragansett towns with difficulty had evaded her attempt to absorb them; and the settlements at Piscataqua and on the Maine coast had finally yielded to her jurisdiction. As long as Cromwell lived and the Government of England was under Puritan direction, Ma.s.sachusetts had little to fear from protests against her; but, with the Cromwellian regime at an end, she could not expect from the restored monarchy a favoring or friendly att.i.tude.

The change in England was not merely one of government; it was one of policy as well. Even during the Cromwellian period, Englishmen awoke to a greater appreciation of the importance of colonies as a.s.sets of the mother country, and began to realize, in a fas.h.i.+on unknown to the earlier period, the necessity of extending and strengthening England's possessions in America. England was engaged in a desperate commercial war with Holland, whose vessels had obtained a monopoly of the carrying trade of the world; and to win in that conflict it was imperative that her statesmen should husband every resource that the kingdom possessed.

The religious agitations of previous years were pa.s.sing away and the New England colonies were not likely to be troubled on account of their Puritanism. The great question in England was not religious conformity but national strength based on commercial prosperity.

Thus England was fas.h.i.+oning a new system and defining a new policy. By means of navigation acts, she barred the Dutch from the carrying trade and confined colonial commerce in large part to the mother country. She established councils and committees of trade and plantations, and, by the seizure of New Netherland in 1664 and the grant of the Carolinas and the Bahamas in 1663 and 1670, she completed the chain of her possessions in America from New England to Barbados. A far-flung colonial world was gradually taking shape, demanding of the King and his advisers an interest in America of a kind hitherto unknown. It is not surprising that so vast a problem, involving the trade and defense of nearly twenty colonies, should have made the internal affairs of New England seem of less consequence to the royal authorities than had been the case in the days of Charles I and Archbishop Laud, when the obtaining of the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay charter had roused such intensity of feeling in England. What was interesting Englishmen was no longer the matter of religious obedience in the colonies, but rather that of their political and commercial dependence on the mother country.

As the future of New England was certain to be debated at Whitehall after 1660, the colonies took pains to have representatives on the ground to meet criticisms and complaints, to ward off attacks, and to beg for favors. Rhode Island sent a commission to Dr. John Clarke, one of her founders and leading men, at that time in London, instructing him to ask for royal protection, self-government, liberty of conscience, and a charter. Ma.s.sachusetts sent Simon Bradstreet and the Reverend John Norton, with a pet.i.tion that reads like a sermon, praying the King not to listen to other men's words but to grant the colonists an opportunity to answer for themselves, they being "true men, fearers of G.o.d and the King, not given to change, orthodox and peaceable in Israel."

Connecticut, with more worldly wisdom, sent John Winthrop, the Governor, a man courtly and tactful, with a pet.i.tion shrewdly worded and to the point. Plymouth entrusted her mission also to Winthrop, hoping for a confirmation of her political and religious liberties. All protested their loyalty to the Crown, while Ma.s.sachusetts, her pet.i.tion signed by the stiff-necked Endecott, prostrated herself at the royal feet, craving pardon for her boldness, and subscribing herself "Your Majesties most humble subjects and suppliants." Did Endecott remember, we wonder, a certain incident connected with the royal ensign at Salem?

Against the lesser colonies no complaints were presented, except in the case of New Haven, which was charged by the inhabitants of Shelter Island with usurpation of their goods and territory; but for Ma.s.sachusetts the restoration of the Stuarts opened a veritable Pandora's box of troubles. In "divers complaints, pet.i.tions, and other informations concerning New England," she was accused of overbearance and oppression, of seizing the territory of New Hamps.h.i.+re and Maine, of denying the rights of Englishmen to Anglicans and non-freemen of the colony, and of persecuting the Quakers and others of religious views different from her own. She was declared to be seeking independence of Crown and Parliament by forbidding appeals to England, refusing to enforce the oath of allegiance to the King, and in general exceeding the powers laid down in her charter. The new plantations council, commissioned by the King in December, 1660, sent a peremptory letter the following April ordering the colony to proclaim the King "in the most solemn manner," and to hold herself in readiness to answer complaints by appointing persons well instructed to represent her before itself in England. At the same time, it begged the King to go slowly, giving Ma.s.sachusetts an opportunity to be heard, and to write a letter "with all possible tenderness," pointing out that submission to the royal authority was absolutely essential. This the King did, confirming the charter of Ma.s.sachusetts, renewing the colony's rights and privileges, and in conciliatory fas.h.i.+on ascribing all derelictions of duty to the iniquity of the times rather than to any evil intention of the heart.

Then declaring that the chief aim of the charter was liberty of conscience, the King struck at the very heart of the Ma.s.sachusetts system, by commanding the magistrates to grant full liberty of wors.h.i.+p to members of the Anglican Church and the right to vote to all who were "orthodox" in religion and possessed of "competent estates." Though this order was evaded by various definitions of "orthodox" and "competent estates" and was not to be fully executed for many years, yet its meaning was clear--no single religious body would ever again be allowed, by the royal authorities in England, to monopolize the government or control the political destinies of a British colony in America or elsewhere.

The policy thus adopted toward Ma.s.sachusetts became even more conciliatory when applied to the other colonies. It is not improbable that the King's advisers saw in the strengthening of Connecticut and Rhode Island an opportunity to check the power of Ma.s.sachusetts and to reduce her importance in New England. However that may be, they lent themselves to the efforts that Winthrop and Clarke were making to obtain charters for their respective colonies. These agents were able, discreet, and broadminded men. Clarke, a resident in England for a number of years, had acquired no little personal influence; and Winthrop, as an old-time friend of the English lords and gentlemen whose governor he had been at Saybrook, could count on the help of the one surviving member of that group, Lord Saye and Sele, who was a privy councillor, a member of the House of Lords and of the plantations council, and, as we are told, Lord Privy Seal, a position that would be of direct service in expediting the issue of a charter. Winthrop had personal qualities, also, that made for success. He was a university man, had made the grand tour of the Continent, and was familiar with official traditions and the ways of the court. Soon after his arrival in England, he became a member of the Royal Society and served on several of its committees, and thus had an opportunity of making friends and of showing his interest in other things than theology. If Cotton Mather was rightly informed, Winthrop was accorded a personal interview with Charles II and presented the King with a ring which Charles I, as Prince of Wales, had given his grandfather, Adam Winthrop.

Winthrop made good use of a good cause. Connecticut had behaved herself well and had incurred no ill-will. She had had no dealings with the Cromwellian Government, had dutifully proclaimed the King, had been discreet in her att.i.tude toward Whalley and Goffe, the regicides who had fled to New England, and had aroused no resentment against herself among her neighbors. With proceedings once begun, the securing of the charter went rapidly forward. Winthrop at first pet.i.tioned for a confirmation of the old Warwick patent, which had been purchased of the English lords and gentlemen in 1644, but later, encouraged it may be by friends in England, he asked for a charter. The request was granted.[2] The doc.u.ment gave to Connecticut the same boundaries as those of the old patent, and conferred powers of government identical with those of the Fundamental Orders of 1639. That the main features of the charter were drawn up in the colony before Winthrop sailed is probable, though it is not impossible that they were drafted in London by Winthrop himself. All that the English officials did was to give the text its proper legal form.

After the receipt of the charter and its proclamation in the colony and after a slight readjustment of the government to meet the few changes required, the general court of Connecticut proceeded to enforce the full territorial rights of the colony. The men of Connecticut had made up their minds, now that the charter had come, to execute its terms to the uttermost and to extend the authority of the colony to the farthest bounds, so that, next to the government of the Bay, Connecticut might be the greatest in New England. The court took under its protection the towns of Stamford and Greenwich, and on the ground that the whole territory westward was within its jurisdiction warned the Dutch governor not to meddle. It accepted the pet.i.tion of Southold on Long Island and of certain residents of Guilford, both of the New Haven federation, for annexation, and, sending a force to Long Island to demand the surrender of the western towns there, it seized Captain John Scott, who was planning to establish a separate government over them, and brought him to Hartford for trial. It informed the towns of Mystic and Pawcatuck, lying in the disputed land between Connecticut and Rhode Island, that they were in the Connecticut colony and must henceforth conduct their affairs according to its laws. The relations with Rhode Island were to be a matter of later adjustment, and no immediate trouble followed; but Stuyvesant, the Dutch Governor, protested angrily against Connecticut's claim to Dutch territory and brought the matter to the attention of the commissioners of the United Colonies. On one pretext or another, the latter delayed action; and the matter was not settled until England's seizure of New Amsterdam in 1664 brought the Dutch rule to an end and made operative the royal grant of the territory to the Duke of York, thus stopping Connecticut in her somewhat headlong career westward and taking from her the whole of Long Island and all the land west of the Connecticut River. If maintained, this grant would have reduced the colony by half and would have materially r.e.t.a.r.ded its progress; but Connecticut eventually saved the western portion of her territory as far as the line of 1650. However, her people could do no more crowding on into the region beyond, for the province of New York now lay directly across the path of her westward expansion.

But with New Haven her success was complete. That unfortunate colony, which had made an effort to obtain a patent in 1645, when the "great s.h.i.+p," bearing the agent Gregson, had foundered with all on board, had no friends at court, and had been too poor after 1660 to join the other colonies in sending an agent to London. Consequently its right to exist as an independent government was not considered in the negotiations which Winthrop had carried on. Serious complaints had been raised against it; its rigorous theocratic policy had created divisions among its own people, many of whom had begun to protest; it had been friendly with the Cromwellian regime and had proclaimed Charles II unwillingly and after long delay; it had protected the regicides until the messengers sent out for their capture could report the colony as "obstinate and pertinacious in contempt of His Majestie." Governor Leete, of the younger generation, was not in sympathy with Davenport's persistent refusal of all overtures from Hartford, and would probably have favored union under the charter of 1662 if Connecticut had been less aggressive in her att.i.tude. As it was, the controversy became pungent and was prolonged for more than two years, though the outcome was never uncertain. The New Haven colony was poor, unprotected, and divided against itself. Its population was decreasing; Indian ma.s.sacres threatened its frontiers; the malcontents of Guilford, led by Bray Rossiter, were demanding immediate and unconditional surrender to Connecticut; and finally in 1664 the successful capture of New Netherland and the grant to the Duke of York threatened the colony with annexation from that quarter. Rather than be joined to New York, New Haven surrendered. One by one the towns broke away until in December of that year only Branford, Guilford, and New Haven remained. On December 13, 1664, the freemen of these towns, with a few others, voted to submit, "as from a necessity ... but with a _salvo jure_ of our former right & claime, as a people who have not yet been heard in point of plea."

The New Haven federation was dissolved; Davenport withdrew to Boston, where he became a partic.i.p.ant in the religious life of that colony; and the strict Puritans of Branford, Guilford, and Milford, led by Abraham Pierson, went to New Jersey and founded Newark. The towns, left loose and at large, joined Connecticut voluntarily and separately, and the New Haven colony ceased to exist. But the dual capital of Connecticut and the alternate meetings of its legislature in Hartford and New Haven, marked for more than two hundred years the twofold origin of the colony and the state.

In the meantime Rhode Island had become a legally incorporated colony.

Even before Winthrop sailed for England, Dr. John Clarke had received a favorable reply to his pet.i.tion for a charter. But a year pa.s.sed and nothing was done about the matter, probably owing to the arrival of Winthrop and the feeling of uncertainty aroused by the conflicting boundary claims, which involved a stretch of some twenty-five miles of territory between Narragansett Bay and the Pawcatuck River. A third claimant also appeared, the Atherton Company, with its headquarters in Boston, which had purchased lands of the Indians at various points in the area and held them under the jurisdiction of Ma.s.sachusetts. When Clarke heard that Winthrop, in drawing the boundaries for the Connecticut charter of 1662, had included this Narragansett territory, he protested vehemently to the King, saying that Connecticut had "injuriously swallowed up the one-half of our colonie," and demanding a reconsideration. Finally, after the question had been debated in the presence of Clarendon and others, the decision was reached to give Rhode Island the boundaries and charter she desired, but to leave the question of conflicting claims for later settlement. Evidently Winthrop, though not agreeing with Clarke in matters of fact regarding the boundaries, supported Rhode Island's appeal for a charter, for Clarendon said afterwards that the draft which Clarke presented had in it expressions that were disliked, but that the charter was granted out of regard for Winthrop.

The Rhode Island charter pa.s.sed the seals July 8, 1663, and was received in the colony four months later with great joy and thanksgiving. It created a common government for all the towns, guaranteeing full liberty "in religious concernments" and freedom from all obligations to conform to the "litturgy, formes, and ceremonyes of the Church of England, or take or subscribe the oathes and articles made and established in that behalfe." This may have been the phrase that Clarendon, who was a High Churchman, objected to when the draft was presented. The form of government was similar in all essential particulars to that of Connecticut.

Rhode Island's enthusiasm in obtaining a charter is not difficult to understand. That amphibious colony, consisting of mainland, islands, and a large body of water, was inhabited by "poor despised peasants," as Governor Brenton described them, "living remote in the woods" and subject to the "envious and subtle contrivances of our neighbour colonies round about us, who are in a combination united together to swallow us up." The colony had not been asked to join the New England Confederation, and its leaders were convinced that the members of the Confederation were in league to filch away their lands and, by driving them into the sea, to eliminate the colony altogether. Plymouth, seeking a better harbor than that of Plymouth Bay, claimed the eastern mainland as well as the chief islands, Hog, Conanicut, and Aquidneck; Ma.s.sachusetts claimed Pawtuxet, Warwick, and the Narragansett country generally; while Connecticut wished to push her eastern boundary as far beyond the Pawcatuck River (the present boundary) as she might be able to do. Had each of these colonies made good its claim, there would have been little left of Rhode Island, and we do not wonder that the settlers looked upon themselves as fighting, with their backs to the sea, for their very existence. Hence they welcomed the charter with the joy of one relieved of a great burden, for, though the boundary question remained unsettled, the charter a.s.sured the colony of its right to exist under royal protection.

FOOTNOTE:

[2] The King's warrant was issued on February 28, the writ of Privy Seal on April 23, and the great seal was affixed on May 10, 1662.

CHAPTER VII

Ma.s.sACHUSETTS DEFIANT

Ma.s.sachusetts was yet to be taken in hand. The English authorities had become convinced that a satisfactory settlement of all the difficulties in New England could be undertaken not in England, where the facts were hard to get at, but in America. Lord Clarendon, the Chancellor, had been in correspondence with Samuel Maverick, an early settler in New England and for many years a resident of Boston and New Amsterdam. As an Anglican, Maverick had sympathized with the opposition in Ma.s.sachusetts led by Dr. Robert Child, and had been debarred from all civil and religious rights in the colony; but he was a man of sobriety and good judgment, whose chief cause of offense was a difference of opinion as to how a colony should conduct its government. The fact that he had been able to get on with the Ma.s.sachusetts men shows that his att.i.tude had never been seriously aggressive, for though he certainly had no liking for the policy of the colony, he does not appear to have been influenced by any hostility towards Ma.s.sachusetts.

Happening to be in England at this juncture, Maverick was called upon by the Chancellor to state the case against the colony, and this he did in several letters, giving many instances of the colony's disloyalty and injustice, and recommending that its privileges be taken away, just as it had taken away the privileges of others. To this suggestion Clarendon paid no heed, for it was no part of the royal purpose to drive the colonies to desperation at a time when the King was but newly come to his throne and needed all his resources in the struggle with the Dutch.

But to Maverick's further suggestions that New Netherland be reduced, that Ma.s.sachusetts be regulated, and that commissioners be sent over to accomplish these ends, he expressed himself as favorable, and all were finally accepted by the Government. Maverick's opinion that British control should be exercised over a British possession and that the government of such a possession should not be conducted after the fas.h.i.+on of an ecclesiastical society happened to coincide with that of the King's advisers and, as Maverick had lived in America for thirty years, his advice was listened to with respect and approval. All thought that, while Ma.s.sachusetts might not be driven with safety, she could probably be persuaded to admit some alteration in her methods of government by tactful representatives.

Had the Duke of York, to whom was entrusted the task of selecting the new commissioners, chosen his men as wisely as Clarendon had shaped his policy, the results, as far as Ma.s.sachusetts was concerned, might have been more successful. The trouble lay with the character of the work to be done. On the one hand the Dutch colony was to be seized by force of arms, a military undertaking involving boldness and executive ability; on the other, the Puritan colonies were to be regulated, a mission which called for the utmost tact. The men chosen for the work were far from the best that might have been selected to bring back to the path of true obedience and impartial justice a colony that was deemed wilful and perverse. They were Richard Nicolls, a favorite of the Duke of York and the only commissioner possessed of discrimination and wisdom, but who, as governor of the yet unconquered Dutch colony, was likely to be taken up with his duties to such an extent as to preclude his sharing prominently in the diplomatic part of his mission; Colonel George Cartwright, a soldier, well-meaning but devoid of sympathy and ignorant of the conditions that confronted him; Sir Robert Carr, the worst of the four, unprincipled and profligate and without control either of his temper or his pa.s.sions; and, lastly, Maverick himself, opposed to the existing order in Ma.s.sachusetts and convinced of the necessity of radical changes in the const.i.tution of the colony. Nicolls was liked and respected; Cartwright and Carr were distrusted as soldiers and strangers, and their presence was resented; whereas Maverick was objected to as a malcontent who had gone to England to complain and had returned with power to make trouble. When the colony heard of his appointment, it sent a vigorous address of protest to the King. If Clarendon expected from the last three of these men the wisdom and discretion that he said were essential to the task, he strangely misjudged their characters. He thought, to be sure, of adding other commissioners from New England, but he did not know whom to select and was fearful of arousing local jealousies. Yet considering the work to be done, it is doubtful if any commissioners, no matter how wisely selected, could have performed the task, for Ma.s.sachusetts did not want to be regulated.

The general object of the commission was "to unite and reconcile persons of very different judgments and practice in all things," particularly concerning "the peace and prosperity of the people and their joint submission and obedience to us and our government." More specifically, the commissioners were to effect the overthrow of the Dutch, investigate conditions among the Indians, capture the regicides, secure obedience to the navigation acts, look into the question of boundaries, and determine the t.i.tle to the Narragansett country, henceforth to be called the King's Province. The commissioners were to make it clear that they were not come to interfere with the prevailing religious systems, but to demand liberty of conscience for all, though Clarendon could not repress the hope that ultimately the New Englanders might return to the Anglican fold. The secret instructions were even more remarkable as evidence of a complete misunderstanding of conditions in New England. Clarendon wished to secure for the Crown the power to nominate or at least to approve the governor of Ma.s.sachusetts, to control the militia, and to examine and correct the laws--powers, it may be noted, which were exercised in every royal colony as a matter of course. He suggested that the commissioners interest themselves in the elections so far as "to gett men of the best reputation and most peaceably inclined" chosen to the a.s.sembly, but he cautioned them to "proceed very warily" in some of these things. He had a hope that Ma.s.sachusetts might be so wrought upon as to choose Nicolls for her governor and Carr for her major-general, but in this, as in the pious hope of a return of the Puritans to the Church of England, he reckoned without a knowledge of the grimness of the Ma.s.sachusetts temper.

The commissioners reached Boston, _en route_ for New Amsterdam, late in July, 1664, asked for troops, and demanded the repeal of the franchise law. The magistrates took the precaution to conceal the charter; they were also heartily glad when the commissioners departed on their errand of conquest and hoped they would not return. The general court, having modified the franchise law sufficiently to meet the letter of the King's command, wrote His Majesty that they wished he would recall his emissaries; and when the magistrates discovered that this impertinent demand not only failed of its object but drew down upon the colony a royal rebuke, with characteristic shrewdness they s.h.i.+fted their ground and prepared to meet the commissioners in fair contest, wearing out their patience and thwarting their plans by every available device. In the meantime, the four men were completing the conquest and pacification of New Netherland, and rearranging the boundary difficulties with Connecticut. Then Maverick and Cartwright pa.s.sed on to Boston, where they were joined in February by Carr, Nicolls remaining in New York. The three men, making Boston their headquarters, visited Plymouth, Newport, and Hartford, where they were received, according to their account, "with great expressions of loyalty"--a statement which, if true, shows how successfully the colonists suppressed their deeper feelings. Having taken the King's Province under the royal protection, and postponed for later consideration the question of the boundary line between Rhode Island and Connecticut, with new complaints against Ma.s.sachusetts ringing in their ears, they returned to Boston to meet the defiant magistrates. There Nicolls joined them in May.

The Ma.s.sachusetts mission was hopeless from the beginning. The magistrates and general court would not admit the right of the commissioners to interfere in any way with governmental procedure or with the course of justice; and standing with absolute firmness on the powers granted by the charter and pointing to the recent renewal by the King as a full confirmation of all their privileges, they denied the validity of the royal mission and refused to discuss the question of jurisdiction. The commissioners said very plainly that Ma.s.sachusetts had not administered the oath of allegiance or permitted the use of the Book of Common Prayer, as she had promised to do, and, as for the new franchise law, they did not understand it themselves and did not believe it would meet the royal requirements. To none of these points did the magistrates make any sufficient reply, but, feeling convinced that safety lay in avoiding decisions, they preferred rather to leave the matter ambiguous than to attempt any clearing up of the points at issue.

But when the commissioners took up the question of appeals and announced their determination to sit as a court of justice, the issue was more fairly joined. The magistrates quoted the text of the charter to show that the colony had full power over all judicial affairs, while the commissioners cited their instructions as a sufficient warrant for their right to hear complaints against the colony. A deadlock ensued, but in the end the colony triumphed. After spending a month in fruitless negotiations, the commissioners gave up the struggle, preferring to leave the conduct of Ma.s.sachusetts to be pa.s.sed upon by the Crown rather than to prolong the controversy. For the time being, the Ma.s.sachusetts men had their own way; but they had raised a serious and dangerous question, that of their allegiance and its obligations, for, as the commissioners said, "The King did not grant away his soveraigntie over you when he made you a corporation. When His Majestie gave you power to make wholesome lawes and to administer justice, he parted not with his right of judging whether those laws are wholsom, or whether justice was administered accordingly or no. When His Majestie gave you authoritie over such of his subjects as lived within the limits of your jurisdiction, he made them not your subjects nor you their supream authority." Had the magistrates been wiser men, less homebred and provincial, and possessed of wider vision, they would have foreseen the dangers that confronted them. But Bellingham and Leverett, the leading representatives of the policy of no surrender, were not men gifted with foresight, and they remained unmoved by the last threat of the commissioners that it would be hazardous to deny the King's supremacy, for "'tis possible that the charter which you so much idolize may be forfeited."

The magistrates were undoubtedly influenced by the character of the commissioners and their rough and ready methods of procedure. Had all been as honorable and upright as Nicolls, who unfortunately took but little part in the negotiations, the outcome might have been different.