larger number of the proprietors were adherents of the Church of England, but Endicott, after a visit to Plymouth, desired to establish an independent church and to renounce the use of the Liturgy. His attitude in this matter involved him in a dispute with two brothers, John and Samuel Browne, who were among the original patentees, and who desired that the services of the Church of England be used exclusively in the colony. Endicott in 1629, therefore, sent these two brothers back to England as being "factious and evil conditioned." + This action of Endicott was considered as being beyond his authority, and the Company therefore severely reprimanded him, but on the other hand they refused to consider the complaints lodged against Endicott by the Brownes. Bartlett says in his Pilgrim Fathers that "this transaction not merely indicates the character of Endicott, but exposes the secret principle upon which the new commonwealth was founded, the open avowal of which would have certainly prevented the concession of a royal charter. It was, while nominally subject to the authority of the Church of

96; Hurlburt, Britain and Her Colonies, pp. 5-8; Bancroft, vol. i., pp. 222–226; Palfrey, History of New England, vol. i., pp. 91-100; Osgood, American Colonies, vol. i., pp. 130-137. For text of charter see Thorpe, Federal and State Constitutions, vol. iii., pp. 1846-1860. See also Appendix IV. at the end of the present chapter. * Fiske, pp. 108-109.

Doyle, vol. ii., pp. 96-97; Bancroft, vol. i., p. 228 et seq.; Eggleston, Beginners of a Nation, p. 200; Hildreth, vol. i., pp. 182-183.

219

England, to establish a totally different system, in which all that was really vital to that system, such as its Episcopal government and appointed formularies, should be entirely set aside and no toleration granted to any other form of worship but that agreed upon by themselves. The expulsion of the Brownes was only the first of that series of oppressive actions which ended in the judicial murder of the Quakers."'*

As the grant given to Endicott overlapped some of the surrounding settlements, he was instructed to appease them by confirming and enlarging their land-holdings, by conferring upon them the freedom of the Company and by allowing them to continue to grow tobacco. Walford, the blacksmith, Blackstone and the other settlers were well paid to move their habitations.† Among the ministers of the settlement were Francis Higginson and Samuel Skelton, to whom we are largely indebted for our knowledge of those times. At this time, a change was made in the Company. A plan to transfer the charter of the Company from England to the colony itself was formed, and this led to an increase in the number and distinction of the emigrants, among the most noted of whom were Sir Richard Saltonstall, John Winthrop, Thomas Dudley, and Isaac Johnson, brother

*See also Palfrey, History of New England, vol. i., pp. 100-104,

† Adams, Three Episodes of Massachusetts History, vol. i., p. 322 et seq.

in-law of the Earl of Lincoln.* Winthrop was now chosen governort and fully justified the confidence placed in him; Thomas Dudley was chosen deputy-governor. Winthrop was a good example of the English gentleman of that time. While loyal to his private beliefs, he was no less firm in asserting the right of public liberty of conscience. He was firmly and loyally attached to the Church of England, but he nevertheless desired to see the church reformed upon the basis of the Scripture as advocated by the Puritans. The emigrants who now came to New England included persons of high character, wealth and learning, and their attachment to the mother country was manifested in a protestation against certain calumnious reports which had gone forth against them. In this they declared their unswerving attachment to the Church and to the land from which they were now departing.

*

The ex

Doyle, pp. 97-98; Palfrey, vol. i., pp. 104110; Young, Chronicles of Massachusetts, p. 281; Massachusetts Colonial Records, vol. i., p. 50 et

The following paragraph is quoted from a letter addressed by them to "the rest of their brethren in and of the Church of England." It was dated from Yarmouth, aboard the Arbella, April 7, 1630. "We desire you would be pleased to take notice of the principals and body of our company, as those who esteem it our honor to call the Church of England, from whence we rise, our dear mother; and cannot part from our native country, where she specially resideth, without much sadness of heart, and many tears in our eyes; ever acknowledging that such hope and part as we have obtained in the common salvation, we have received in her bosom, and

pedition which started in 1630 was the most important that had thus far left England for America. It consisted of 17 ships with about 1,000 emigrants, among whom were four ministers of the Non-Conformist faith. The settlers carried with them every necessity for the foundation of a permanent colony.*

Dr. Robertson's remarks regarding the movement to transfer the government of the colony from England to America are well worth quoting:

"In this singular transaction, to which there is nothing similar in the history of English colonization, two circumstances merit particular attention: one is the power of the Company to make this transference; the other is the silent acquiescence with which the king permitted it to take place. If the validity of this determination of the Company be tried by the charter which constituted it a body politic, and conveyed to it all the corporate powers with which it was invested, it is evident that it could neither exercise those powers in any mode different from what the charter prescribed, nor alienate them in such a manner as to convert the jurisdiction of a trading corporation in England into a provincial government in America. But from the first institution of the Company of Massachusetts Bay, its members seem to have been animated sucked it from her breasts. We leave it not, therefore, as loathing that milk wherewith we were nourished there, but, blessing God with the parentage and education, as members of the same body, shall always rejoice in her good, and unfeignedly grieve for any sorrow that shall ever betide her, and while we have breath, sincerely desire and endeavor the continuance and abundance of her welfare, with the enlargement of her bounds in the kingdom of Jesus Christ." They also ask, further on in the letter, of their brethren in England, that they may not be despised nor deserted "in their prayers and affections." Hubbard, New England, pp. 126-127. See also Cotton Mather, Magnalia, vol. i., pp. 74-75.

*Fiske, Beginnings of New England, p. 101 et seq.; Palfrey, History of New England, vol. i., p. 110 et seq.

with a spirit of innovation in civil policy, as

221

Going there they found the place oc

established usages in the one, they were prepared for deviating from them in the other. They had applied for a royal charter in order to give legal effect to their operations in England as acts of a body politic; but the persons whom they sent out to America, as soon as they landed there, considered themselves as individuals united together by voluntary association, possessing the natural right of men who form a society, to adopt what mode of government, and to enact what laws, they deemed most conducive to the general felicity. Upon this principle of being entitled to judge and decide for themselves, they established their church in Salem, without re

gard to the institutions of the Church of England,

of which the charter supposed them to be mem

bers, and bound, of consequence, to conformity

with its ritual. Suitably to the same ideas, we shall observe them framing all their future plans of civil and ecclesiastical policy. The king, though abundantly vigilant in observing and checking slighter encroachments on his preroga tive, was either so much occupied with other cares, occasioned by his fatal breach with his parliament, that he could not attend to the proceedings of the Company, or he was so much pleased with the proposal of removing a body of turbulent subjects to a distant country, where they might be useful, and could not prove dangerous, that he was disposed to connive at the irregularity of a measure which facilitated their departure." *

Among the passengers who embarked on board the Arbella, so named after Lady Arbella Johnson, who with her husband was also a passenger, were Winthrop and Dudley. In June, 1630, the ship arrived in the bay and at Charlestown they found Endicott. They had at first intended to found a settlement at this place, but the opposite peninsula quickly attracted their attention.

* Robertson, History of America, book x., p. 230. See also Chalmers, Introduction to History of Revolt of American Colonies, vol. i., pp. 42, 43; Bancroft, vol. i., p. 230 et seq. VOL. I.-15

66

therefore determined to establish the new settlement upon this spot. The new town was called Boston, in honor of the place from which the settlers had come. Other parties of emigrants now arrived and settled at various places in the surrounding country, giving names to the various towns and villages which they founded, such as Salem, Charlestown, Dorchester, Watertown, Roxbury, Mystic, and Saugus (Lynn).*“Each settlement," says Mr. Hildreth, at once assumed that township authority which has ever formed so marked a feature in the political organization of New England. The people assembled in town meeting, voted taxes for local purposes, and chose three, five or seven of the principal inhabitants, at first under other names, but early known as 'selectmen,' who had the expenditure of this money, and the executive management of town affairs. A treasurer and a town clerk were also chosen, and a constable was soon added for the service of civil and criminal processes. Each town constituted, in fact, a little republic, almost complete in itself."†

While the emigrants had expressed a feeling of affection and warm at

* Doyle, English Colonies in America, vol. ii., pp. 101-103; Young's Chronicles, p. 313..

Hildreth, History of the United States, vol. i., p. 186. See also Doyle, p. 103 et seq.; Palfrey, History of New England, vol. i., p. 114 et seq.; Massachusetts Colonial Records, vol. i., pp. 76, 79, 167, 172.

tachment to the Church of England, yet they had hardly set foot in the New World when they began to organize churches according to their own ideas of right and propriety, but for the present they adopted a temporizing policy and acted prudently, so that they would not provoke needless collision on the fine points such as the value and necessity of Episcopal ordination, the obligation of ceremonies, etc. The Boston settlers had not been subjected to hardships so severe as those with which the Plymouth colonists had been forced to contend; yet they experienced shortness of provisions, debility, severity of the winter and other unfavorable circumstances, and before December, 1630, more than 200 had died, among whom were Lady Arbella Johnson and her husband.† Before the winter

*On the relations between church and state in Massachusetts see Osgood, American Colonies, vol. i., pp. 200-223, and authorities cited, especially Dexter, Congregationalism as seen in its Literature; Cotton Mather, Magnalia, books iii.-v.; Felt, Ecclesiastical History of England, vol. i.; John Cotton, The Way of the Churches of Jesus Christ in New England; Hooker, Survey of the Summe of Church Discipline; Ellis, Puritan Age in Massachusetts.

† Cotton Mather bestows this somewhat quaint tribute to their character. "Of those who soon dyed after their first arrival, not the least considerable was the Lady Arbella, who left an earthly paradise in the family of an Earldom, to encounter the sorrows of a wilderness, for the entertainments of a pure worship in the house of God; and then immediately left that wilderness for the Heavenly paradise, whereto the compassionate Jesus, of whom she was a follower, called her. We have read concerning a noble woman of Bohemia, who forsook her friends, her plate, her house and all; and because the gates of the city were guarded. crept through

had passed, the infant colony was threatened with extinction because of famine, but fortunately a vessel arrived from England with provisions, and their broken spirits were accordingly revived. Many of the emigrants, however, were so disgusted that they returned home and spread reports which inflicted much injury on the colony, and for some time prevented further emigration.

When the Company decided upon removal to New England its debts amounted to £2,500, in addition to which the sum of £1,500 was needed for immediate use.* At a meeting of the Company, November 30, 1629, it was therefore decided to appoint a board of ten board of ten "undertakers " (five planters and five adventurers) to take charge of the joint stock of the Company for ten years and to assume

the common sewer, that she might enjoy the institutions of our Lord at another place where they might be had. The spirit which acted that noble woman, we may suppose, carried this blessed lady thus to and through the hardships of an American desert. But as for her virtuous husband, Isaac Johnson, Esq., He try

To live without her, lik'd it not, and dy'd. His mourning for the death of his honorable consort was too bitter to be extended a year; about a month after her death, his ensued, unto the extreme loss of the whole plantation. But at the end of this perfect and upright man, there was not only peace, but joy; and his joy particularly expressed itself, that God had kept his eyes open so long as to see one church of the Lord Jesus Christ gathered in these ends of the earth, before his own going away to Heaven" Mather, Magnalia, vol. i., p. 77. See also Adams, Three Episodes of Massachusetts History, vol. i., pp. 234-237.

* Massachusetts Colonial Records, vol. i., pp. 62-63.