1629] The Great Emigration 81 Transfer of the govern ment. Winsor's next year the king by royal charter confirmed this grant of land to the original grantees and others who meantime had become associated with them (1629). In the same charter the king gave them extensive powers of jurisdiction, amounting in fact to self-government. There was no requirement that the seat of government should be in England, as had been the case in all previous grants, and there is some mystery surrounding its absence in this charter. Boston, 1, 99. Winthrop, for many years governor of the colony, and its historian, writes that "it was so intended and with great difficulty we got it abscinded" or stricken out; by what means the difficulty was overcome, he does not say. The company was legally competent to transfer the govern- The Camment of the colony to those of its members who proposed bridge Agreeto emigrate; by so doing the charter of a colonizing Winsor's company was converted into the constitution of an almost Boston, I, independent state. The decisive step was taken at Cam- 99-102; bridge (August, 1629) when many leading Puritans signed temporaries, an agreement binding themselves to emigrate to Massa- I, No. 106. chusetts. The 60. The Great Emigration, 1630-40. The year 1628-29 marked the culmination of the first period in the contest between the Puritans and the crown over the question of taxation, a question which really included all others. Petition of Right, to which the king had reluctantly assented in 1628, was violated, according to the Puritan interpretation of its most important clause, and the king, dismissing Parliament after a most violent scene (1629), arrested those who had been foremost in the defense of the cause of liberty, and seemed determined to govern England without parliaments in the future. In the years immediately following, Charles by degrees came to rely upon the advice and judgment of William Laud, then Bishop of London, and later Archbishop of Canterbury. Like the king, Laud was a sincere, honest man of narrow mind and most intolerant of opposition. Both were strongly attached to the ceremonials of the Established Church and were resolved not G ment, 1629. Hart's Con The Puri tans, the Gardiner's Revolution; 102. Fiske's New England, 137. Settlement of Massachusetts, 162830. Fiske's New Eng Hart's Con temporaries, I, Nos. 56, merely to retain those still in existence, but to bring back many which had been discarded in former years. Deprived of their money without the consent of Parliament, and forced to take part in services which they regarded as idolatrous, the Nonconformists resolved to make use of their charter and to found a colony in New England, where they would be far away from king and archbishop. This period of depression for the Puritans continued for eleven years (1629-40), when the king's quarrel with the Scots compelled him again to summon Parliament, this time under circumstances which gave the Puritans and other enemies of despotic government the power to compel him at least to listen to their remonstrances. From that time on the Puritans acquired more and more authority, until the decisive battle of Naseby (1645) made them masters of England. The New England colonies of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Haven were founded in the years of the supremacy of William Laud; his downfall led to an abrupt termination of Puritan emigration from England; indeed, the movement began in the other direction, and many of the leading New England colonists exercised. great influence in England during the time of the Commonwealth and Protectorate. The Massachusetts Bay Company planted its first colony at Salem in 1628; in 1629 the transfer of the charter was decided upon, and in 1630 the "great emigration" began. Led by John Winthrop, a man of property and of remarkland, 88-104 able aptitude for affairs, a fleet of fifteen vessels sailed across the Atlantic. More than one thousand colonists arrived during this year and founded the towns of Boston, Charlestown, Roxbury, Dorchester, Watertown, and Newtown,― later called Cambridge; within ten years no less than twenty thousand immigrants landed on the shores of Massachusetts. No movement like this had taken place before in historic times. There were already a few colonists living on the shores of Boston harbor. They were generally well treated by the new owners of the soil. One 57; Higgin son's Ex plorers, 341367. 1630] Problems of Government 83 Stedman and Hutchinson, I, 107; Hart's Contemporaries, I, No. 103. The free men of Massachu 109. ernment of the colony. of the earlier comers, Thomas Morton, led a dissolute Morton at Merry life at Mount Wollaston, or Merry Mount as he termed it. Mount. His doings were not at all relished by the Puritans. They Bradford in repeatedly arrested him and sent him away. In revenge he wrote a book, entitled The New English Canaan, in which he gave an outsider's view of Puritan institutions and manners. It seems most amusing to us; it was regarded by the Puritans as scandalous. Morton also proved useful to the enemies of Massachusetts in England. 61. Problems of Government. By the charter the powers of government were conferred on the freemen or stockholders of the corporation. Eight or twelve of them were setts. Fiske's in Massachusetts in 1630, and they possessed all powers New England, 105of government in the colony, including the right to elect officers, make laws, judge offenders, and execute their own decisions. Had the original freemen refused to admit Their govother persons to a share in their powers, they would have established an oligarchy. Happily, they decided to proceed in a different spirit. In May, 1631, they admitted to the company one hundred and eighteen persons. At the same meeting at which this was done, the rights of the freemen were largely abridged, and the provision was made that in the future only Puritan church members could be admitted to the franchise. The idea in restricting the power of the freemen seems to have been to regard the assistants, or directors of the corporation, as the legislative body. It happened that the assistants were obliged to assess several sums of money on the towns for general The Waterexpenses, as the building of forts. The people of Watertown protested that "it was not safe to pay money after that sort for fear of bringing themselves and their posterity into bondage "; but Winthrop explained to them. that they had no option in the matter. There was undoubtedly a feeling of unrest in the colony, and the freemen demanded a sight of the charter; they at once saw that the supreme power was with the assistants and the freemen in the General Court or meeting of the stock Winthrop's New Eng land; Hart's Contemporaries, I, No. 107. town Pro test, 1633. The free men assert their power, 1634. holders of the company. They repealed the law restricting the powers of the freemen, and elected Thomas Dudley governor, in place of Winthrop. To this latter step they had been provoked by a most inopportune declaration by John Cotton, one of the Boston ministers, that a man could not be turned out of office so long as he discharged his duties faithfully. It is interesting to observe how early Representative government established, 1634. John Winthrop, Governor of Massachusetts a tendency toward democratic ideas showed itself in Massachusetts, as well as to note how repugnant such notions were to the leading men in the colony. The freemen soon found it inconvenient to exercise their hard-won powers of government: it was expensive to travel to Boston from the towns which soon sprang up all along the seacoast; and it was dangerous to leave their families unprotected. To obviate these inconveniences, they estab 1631] Attacks on Massachusetts 85 lished a representative form of government by which the freemen in each town deputed two of their number to act for them as a committee at the General Court. They also evolved a system of voting by ballots or papers, as they called them, and worked out a clumsy mode of nominating candidates for office. 62. Attacks on Massachusetts. The prosperity of the new colony was in many ways a disadvantage: it aroused the jealousy of other Englishmen engaged in colonial enterprises; it awakened the suspicions of the English government; and it attracted to Massachusetts many restless spirits who proved to be most uncongenial to the rulers of the colony. tacks Massachusetts, 1634-38. * Adams's Three Episodes, 1, 240; Fiske's New England, 111-113. There seem to have been two parties in the Council for Gorges atNew England: one of them was composed of Puritans, as the Earl of Warwick, from whom, as president, the grant of Massachusetts had been obtained; the other faction was composed of the remnants of the old Plymouth Company and had no sympathy whatever with Puritan colonization. Sir Ferdinando Gorges was the leader of the latter group, and saw with dismay the sudden prosperity of the Puritans in Massachusetts. With the aid of Morton and other malcontents, he laid the matter before the royal officials. The result was an order from the court of King's Bench which was regarded as preliminary to the cancellation of the Massachusetts charter (1634). Gorges also secured. the surrender to the crown of the New England charter and was himself appointed governor general of New England (1635). The outcome was not what he expected; the vessel which was to bear him to his new government was destroyed on the stocks, and the Massachusetts Bay Company paid no heed to the mandate of the king's judges. It was in this year (1635) that the second writ for ship Gardiner's money was issued; a monarch who could not pay the current expenses of his court without raising a spirit of rebellion among his subjects at home, had no funds with which tory of to wage war on far-off Massachusetts. To a letter from Puritan Revolution or any his England. |