The Emancipation of Massachusetts

“When she was come one of the ruling elders called her forth before the assembly,” and read to her the twenty-nine errors of which she was accused, all of which she admitted she had maintained. “Then she asked by what rule such an elder would come to her pretending to desire light and indeede to entrappe her.” He answered that he came not to “entrap her but in compassion to her soule....”

“Then presently she grew into passion … professing withall that she held none of these things … before her imprisonment.” [Footnote: Brief Apol. pp. 59-61.]

The court sat till eight at night, when “Mr. Cotton pronounced the sentence of admonition … with much zeal and detestation of her errors and pride of spirit.” [Footnote: Winthrop, i. 256.] An adjournment was then agreed on for a week and she was ordered to return to Roxbury; but this was more than she could bear, and her distress was such that the congregation seem to have felt some touch of compassion, for she was committed to the charge of Cotton till the next lecture day, when the trial was to be resumed. [Footnote: Brief Apol. p. 62.] At his house her mind recovered its tone and when she again appeared she not only retracted the wild opinions she had broached while at Joseph Welde’s, but admitted “that what she had spoken against the magistrates at the court (by way of revelation) was rash and ungrounded.” [Footnote: Winthrop, i. 258.]

But nothing could avail her. She was in the hands of men determined to make her expiation of her crimes a by-word of terror; her fate was sealed. The doctrines she now professed were less objectionable, so she was examined as to former errors, among others “that she had denied inherent righteousness;” she “affirmed that it was never her judgment; and though it was proved by many testimonies … yet she impudently persisted in her affirmation to the astonishment of all the assembly. So that … the church with one consent cast her out.... After she was excommunicated her spirit, which seemed before to be somewhat dejected, revived again and she gloried in her sufferings.” [Footnote: Winthrop, i. 258.] And all this time she had been alone; her friends were far away.

That no circumstances of horror might be lost, she and one of her most devoted followers, Mary Dyer, were nearing their confinements during this time of misery. Both cases ended in misfortunes over whose sickening details Thomas Welde and his reverend brethren gloated with a savage joy, declaring that “God himselfe was pleased to step in with his casting vote … as clearly as if he had pointed with his finger.” [Footnote: Short Story, Preface, Section 5.] Let posterity draw a veil over the shocking scene.

Two or three days after her condemnation “the governor sent [her] a warrant … to depart … she went by water to her farm at the Mount … and so to the island in the Narragansett Bay which her husband and the rest of that sect had purchased of the Indians.” [Footnote: Winthrop, i. 259.]

This pure and noble but most unhappy woman had sinned against the clergy, past forgiveness here or hereafter. They gibbeted her as Jezebel, and her name became a reproach in Massachusetts through two hundred years. But her crimes and the awful ending of her life are best read in the Christian words of the Rev. Thomas Welde, whose gentle spirit so adorned his holy office.

“For the servants of God who came over into New England … seeing their ministery was a most precious sweete savour to all the saints before she came hither, it is easie to discerne from what sinke that ill vapour hath risen which hath made so many of her seduced party to loath now the smell of those flowers which they were wont to find sweetnesse in. [Footnote: Short Story, p. 40.] … The Indians set upon them, and slew her and all the family. [Footnote: Mrs. Hutchinson and her family were killed in a general massacre of the Dutch and English by the Indians on Long Island. Winthrop, ii. 136.] … Some write that the Indians did burne her to death with fire, her house and all the rest named that belonged to her; but I am not able to affirme by what kind of death they slew her, but slaine it seemes she is, according to all reports. I never heard that the Indians in those parts did ever before this, commit the like outrage …; and therefore God’s hand is the more apparently seene herein, to pick out this wofull woman, to make her and those belonging to her, an unheard of heavie example of their cruelty above al others.” [Footnote: Short Story, Preface.]

CHAPTER III. – THE CAMBRIDGE PLATFORM

With the ruin of the Antinomians, opposition to the clergy ceased within the church itself, but many causes combined to prevent the bulk of the people from participating in the communion. Of those who were excluded, perhaps even the majority might have found it impossible to have secured their pastor’s approbation, but numbers who would have been gladly received were restrained by conscientious scruples; and more shrank from undergoing the ordeal to which they would have been obliged to submit. It was no light matter for a pious but a sincerely honest man to profess his conversion, and how God had been pleased to work “in the inward parts of his soul,” when he was not absolutely certain that he had indeed been visited by the Spirit. And it is no exaggeration to say that to sensitive natures the initiation was appalling. The applicant had first to convince the minister of his worthiness, then his name was openly propounded, and those who knew of any objection to his character, either moral or religious, were asked to give notice to the presbytery of elders. If the candidate succeeded in passing this private examination as to his fitness the following scene took place in church:—

“The party appearing in the midst of the assembly … the ruling elder speaketh in this manner: Brethren of this congregation, this man or woman … hath beene heretofore propounded to you, desiring to enter into church fellowship with us, and we have not since that heard anything from any of you to the contrary of the parties admittance but that we may goe on to receive him: therefore now, if any of you know anything against him, why he may not be admitted, you may yet speak.... Whereupon, sometimes men do speak to the contrary … and so stay the party for that time also till this new offence be heard before the elders, so that sometimes there is a space of divers moneths between a parties first propounding and receiving, and some are so bashfull as that they choose rather to goe without the communion than undergoe such publique confessions and tryals, but that is held their fault.” [Footnote: Lechford, Plain Dealing, pp. 6, 7.]

Those who were thus disfranchised, Lechford, who knew what he was talking about, goes on to say, soon began to complain that they were “ruled like slaves;” and there can be no doubt that they had to submit to very substantial grievances. The administration of justice especially seems to have been defective. “Now the most of the persons at New England are not admitted of their church, and therefore are not freemen, and when they come to be tryed there, be it for life or limb, name or estate, or whatsoever, they must bee tryed and judged too by those of the church, who are in a sort their adversaries: how equall that hath been, or may be, some by experience doe know, others may judge.” [Footnote: Plain Dealing, p. 23.]

The government was in fact in the hands of a small oligarchy of saints, [Footnote: “Three parts of the people of the country remaine out of the church.” Plain Dealing, p. 73. A. D. 1642.] who were, in their turn, ruled by their priests, and as the repression of thought inevitable under such a system had roused the Antinomians, who were voters, to demand a larger intellectual freedom, so the denial of ordinary political rights to the majority led to discontent.

Since under the theocracy there was no department of human affairs in which the clergy did not meddle, they undertook as a matter of course to interfere with the militia, and the following curious letter written to the magistrates by the ministers of Rowley shows how far they carried their supervision even so late as 1689.

ROWLEY, July 24th, 1689.

May it please your honors,

The occasion of these lines is to inform you that whereas our military company have nominated Abel Platts, for ensign, we conceive that it is our duty to declare that we cannot approve of their choice in that he is corrupt in his judgment with reference to the Lord’s Supper, declaring against Christ’s words of justification, and hereupon hath withdrawn himself from communion with the church in that holy ordinance some years, besides some other things wherein he hath shown no little vanity in his conversation and hath demeaned himself unbecomingly toward the word and toward the dispensers of it....

SAMUEL PHILLIPS. EDWARD PAISON. [Footnote: History of Newbury, p. 80.]

A somewhat similar difficulty, which happened in Hingham in 1645, produced very serious consequences. A new captain had been chosen for their company; but a dispute having arisen, the magistrates, on the question being submitted to them, set the election aside and directed the old officers to keep their places until the General Court should meet. Notwithstanding this order the commotion continued to increase, and the pastor, Mr. Peter Hubbert, “was very forward to have excommunicated the lieutenant,” who was the candidate the magistrates favored. [Footnote: Winthrop, ii. 222, 223.] Winthrop happened to be deputy governor that year, and the aggrieved officer applied to him for protection; whereupon, as the defendants seemed inclined to be recalcitrant, several were committed in open court, among whom were three of Mr. Hubbert’s brothers.

Forthwith the clergyman in great wrath headed a petition to which he obtained a large number of signatures, in which he prayed the General Court to take cognizance of the cause, since it concerned the public liberty and the liberty of the church.

At its next session, the legislature proceeded to examine the whole case, and Winthrop was brought to trial for exceeding his jurisdiction as a magistrate. A contest ensued between the deputies and assistants, which was finally decided by the influence of the elders. The result was that Winthrop was acquitted and Mr. Hubbert and the chief petitioners were fined. [Footnote: Winthrop, ii. 227.]

In March the constable went to Hingham to collect the money, [Footnote: 1645-46, 18 March.] but he found the minister indisposed to submit in silence. About thirty people had collected, and before them all Mr. Hubbert demanded the warrant; when it was produced he declared it worthless because not in the king’s name, and then went on to add that the government “was not more then a corporation in England, and … had not power to put men to death … that for himself he had neither horn nor hoofe of his own, nor anything wherewith to buy his children cloaths … if he must pay the fine he would pay it in books, but that he knew not for what they were fined, unlesse it were for petitioning: and if they were so waspish they might not be petitioned, then he could not tell what to say.” [Footnote: New Eng. Jonas, Marvin’s ed. p. 5.]

Unluckily for Mr. Hubbert he had taken the popular side in this dispute and had thus been sundered from his brethren, who sustained Winthrop, and in the end carried him through in triumph; and not only this, but he was suspected of Presbyterian tendencies, and a committee of the elders who had visited Hingham to reconcile some differences in the congregation had found him in grave fault. The government was not sorry, therefore, to make him a public example, as appeared not only by these proceedings, but by the way he was treated in the General Court the next autumn. He was accordingly indicted for sedition, tried and convicted in June, fined twenty pounds, and bound over to good behavior in forty pounds more. [Footnote: New Eng. Jonas, p. 6., 2 June, 1646.] Such a disturbance as this seems to have been all that was needed to bring the latent discontent to a focus.

William Vassal had been an original patentee and was a member of the first Board of Assistants, who were appointed by the king. Being, however, a man of liberal views he had not found Massachusetts congenial; he had returned to England after a stay of only a month, and when he came again to America in 1635, he had settled at Scituate, the town adjoining Hingham, but in the Plymouth jurisdiction. Having both wealth and social position he possessed great influence, and he now determined to lead an agitation for equal rights and liberty of conscience in both colonies at once, by petitioning the legislatures, and in case of failure there, presenting similar petitions to Parliament.

Bradford was this year [Footnote: 1645.] governor of Plymouth, and Edward Winslow was an assistant. Winslow himself had been governor repeatedly, was a thorough-going churchman, and deep in all the councils of the conservative party. There was, however, no religious qualification for the suffrage in the old colony, and the complexion of its politics was therefore far more liberal than in Massachusetts; so Vassal was able to command a strong support when he brought forward his proposition. Winslow, writing to his friend Winthrop at Boston, gives an amusing account of his own and Bradford’s consternation, and the expedients to which they were forced to resort in the legislature to stave off a vote upon the petition, when Vassal made his motion in October, 1645.

“After this, the first excepter [Vassal] having been observed to tender the view of a scroule from man to man, it came at length to be tendered to myself, and withall, said he, it may be you will not like this. Having read it, I told him I utterly abhorred it as such as would make us odious to all Christian commonweales: But at length he told the governor [Bradford] he had a written proposition to be propounded to the court, which he desired the court to take into consideration, and according to order, if thought meet, to be allowed: To this the deputies were most made beforehand, and the other three assistants, who applauded it as their Diana; and the sum of it was, to allow and maintaine full and free tollerance of religion to all men that would preserve the civill peace and submit unto government; and there was no limitation or exception against Turke, Jew, Papist, Arian, Socinian, Nicholaytan, Familist, or any other, &c. But our governor and divers of us having expressed the sad consequences would follow, especially myselfe and Mr. Prence, yet notwithstanding it was required, according to order, to be voted: But the governor would not suffer it to come to vote, as being that indeed would eate out the power of Godlines, &c.... You would have admired to have seen how sweet this carrion relished to the pallate of most of the deputies! What will be the issue of these things, our all ordering God onely knows.... But if he have such a judgment for this place, I trust we shall finde (I speake for many of us that groane under these things) a resting place among you for the soales of our feet.” [Footnote: Hutch. Coll., Prince Soc. ed. i. 174.]

As just then nothing more could be done in Plymouth, proceedings were transferred to Massachusetts. Samuel Maverick is a bright patch of color on the sad Puritan background. He had a dwelling at Winnisime, that “in the yeare 1625 I fortified with a pillizado and fflankers and gunnes both belowe and above in them which awed the Indians who at that time had a mind to cutt off the English.” [Footnote: Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, Oct. 1884, p. 236.] When Winthrop landed, he found him keeping open house, so kindly and freehanded that even the grim Johnson relaxes when he speaks of him: “a man of very loving and curteous behaviour, very ready to entertaine strangers, yet an enemy to the reformation in hand, being strong for the lordly prelatical power.” [Footnote: Wonder-Working Providence, Poole’s ed. p. 37.]

This genial English churchman entertained every one at his home on Noddle’s Island, which is now East Boston: Vane and Lord Ley, and La Tour when he came to Boston ruined, and even Owen when he ran off with another man’s wife, and so brought a fine of £100 on his host. Josselyn says with much feeling: “I went a shore upon Noddles Island to Mr. Samuel Maverick, … the only hospitable man in the whole countrey.” He was charitable also, and Winthrop relates how, when the Indians were dying of the smallpox, he, “his wife and servants, went daily to them, ministered to their necessities, and buried their dead, and took home many of their children.” He was generous, too, with his wealth; and when the town had to rebuild the fort on Castle Island much of the money came from him.

But, as Endicott told the Browns, when he shipped them to England, because their practice in adhering to their Episcopal orders tended to “mutiny,” “New England was no place for such as they.” One by one they had gone,—the Browns first, and afterward William Blackstone, who had found it best to leave Boston because he could not join the church; and now the pressure on Maverick began to make him restive. Though he had been admitted a freeman in the early days, he was excluded from all offices of importance; he was taxed to support a church of which he disapproved, yet was forced to attend, though it would not baptize his children; and he was so suspected that, in March, 1635, he had been ordered to remove to Boston, and was forbidden to lodge strangers for more than one night without leave from a magistrate. Under such circumstances he could not but sympathize with Vassal in his effort to win for all men equal rights before the law. Next after him in consequence was Dr. Robert Childe, who had taken a degree at Padua, and who, though not a freeman, had considerable interests in the country,—a man of property and standing. There were five more signers of the petition: Thomas Burton, John Smith, David Yale, Thomas Fowle, and John Dand, but they do not require particular notice. They prayed that “civil liberty and freedome be forthwith granted to all truly English, equall to the rest of their countrymen, as in all plantations is accustomed to be done, and as all free-borne enjoy in our native country.... Further that none of the English nation … be banished unlesse they break the known lawes of England.... We therefore humbly intreat you, in whose hands it is to help … for the glory of God … to give liberty to the members of the churches of England not scandalous in their lives … to be taken into your congregations, and to enjoy with you all those liberties and ordinances Christ hath purchased for them, and into whose name they are baptized… or otherwise to grant liberty to settle themselves here in a church way according to the best reformations of England and Scotland. If not, we and they shall be necessitated to apply our humble desires to the Honorable Houses of Parliament.” [Footnote: New Eng. Jonas, Marvin’s ed. pp. 13-15.]

This petition was presented to the court on May 19, 1646; but the session was near its close, and it was thought best to take no immediate steps. The elders, however, became satisfied that the moment had come for a thorough organization of the church, and they therefore caused the legislature to issue a general invitation to all the congregations to send representatives to a synod to be held at Cambridge. But notwithstanding the inaction of the authorities, the clergy were perfectly aware of the danger, and they passed the summer in creating the necessary indignation among the voters: they bitterly denounced from their pulpits “the sons of Belial, Judasses, sons of Corah,” “with sundry appellations of that nature … which seemed not to arise from a gospel spirit.” Sometimes they devoted “a whole sermon, and that not very short,” to describing the impending ruin and exhorting the magistrates “to lay hold upon” the offenders. [Footnote: New Eng. Jonas, Marvin’s ed. p. 19.] Winthrop had been chosen governor in May, and, when the legislature met in October, he was made chairman of a committee to draft an answer to Childe. This document may be found in Hutchinson’s Collection. As a state paper devoted to the discussion of questions of constitutional law it has little merit, but it may have been effective as a party manifesto. A short adjournment followed till November, when, on reassembling, the elders were asked for their advice upon this absorbing topic.

“Mr. Hubbard of Hingham came with the rest, but the court being informed that he had an hand in a petition, which Mr. Vassall carried into England against the country in general, the governour propounded, that if any elder present had any such hand, &c., he would withdraw himself.” Mr. Hubbert sitting still a good space, one of the deputies stated that he was suspected, whereupon he rose and said he knew nothing of such a petition.

Then Winthrop replied that he “must needs deliver his mind about him,” and though he had no proof about the petition, “yet in regard he had so much opposed authority and offered such contempt to it, … he thought he would (in discretion) withdraw himself, &c., whereupon he went out.” [Footnote: Winthrop, ii. 278.]

The ministers who remained then proceeded to define the relations of Massachusetts toward England, and the position they assumed was very simple.

“I. We depend upon the state of England for protection and immunities of Englishmen.... II. We conceive … we have granted by patent such full and ample power … of making all laws and rules of our obedience, and of a full and final determination of all cases in the administration of justice, that no appeals or other ways of interrupting our proceedings do lie against us.” [Footnote: Winthrop, ii. 282.]

In other words, they were to enjoy the privileges and safeguards of British subjects without yielding obedience to British law.

Under popular governments the remedy for discontent is free discussion; under despotisms it is repression. In Massachusetts energetic steps were promptly taken to punish the ring-leaders in what the court now declared to be a conspiracy. The petitioners were summoned, and on being questioned refused to answer until some charge was made. A hot altercation followed, which ended in the defendants tendering an appeal, which was refused; and they were committed for trial. [Footnote: Winthrop, ii. 285.] A species of indictment was then prepared in which they were charged with publishing seditious libels against the Church of Christ and the civil government. The gravamen of the offence was the attempt to persuade the people “that the liberties and privileges in our charter belong to all freeborn Englishmen inhabitants here, whereas they are granted only to such as the governour and company shall think fit to receive into that fellowship.” [Footnote: Idem.] The appeal was held criminal because a denial of the jurisdiction of the government. The trial resembled Wheelwright’s. Like him the defendants refused to make submission, but persisted “obstinately and proudly in their evil practice;” that is to say, they maintained the right of petition and the legality of their course. They were therefore fined: Childe £50; Smith £40; Maverick, because he had not yet appealed, £10; and the others £30 each; three magistrates dissented.

Childe at once began hasty preparations to sail. To prevent him Winthrop called the assistants together, without, however, giving the dissenting magistrates notice, and arranged to have him arrested and searched.

One striking characteristic of the theocracy was its love for inflicting mental suffering upon its victims. The same malicious vindictiveness which sent Morton to sea in sight of his blazing home, and which imprisoned Anne Hutchinson in the house of her bitterest enemy, now suggested a scheme for making Childe endure the pangs of disappointment, by allowing him to embark, and then seizing him as the ship was setting sail. And though the plan miscarried, and the arrest had to be made the night before, yet even as it was the prisoner took his confinement very “grievously, but he could not help it.” [Footnote: Winthrop, ii. 294.]

Nothing criminating was found in his possession, but in Dand’s study, which was ransacked, copies of two petitions were discovered, with a number of queries relating to certain legal aspects of the charter, and intended to be submitted to the Commissioners for the Plantations at London.