The Puritans, the king, and the archbishop, 1629-40. Gardiner's Puritan Revolution; Fiske's New England, 97-102. Fiske's New England, 137. 59. The Puritans in England. The year 1628-29 marked the end 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. The 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. Charles now began 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 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 idol worship, the Nonconformists resolved to make use of their charter and settle 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 1630] Problems of Government 71 great influence in England during the time of the Commonwealth and Protectorate. Massachusetts, 162830. Fiske's New England, 88-104; Hart's Con temporaries, I, Nos. 56, 57: Higgin son's Ex plorers, Merry Mount. Stedman and 60. The Great Emigration, 1630-40.- The Massachu- Settlement of setts 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 ability, 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 341-367. 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 of the earlier comers, Thomas Morton, led a reckless Morton at life at Mount Wollaston, or Merry Mount as he termed it. 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 given to the freemen or stockholders of the corporation. Eight or twelve of them were in Massachusetts in 1630, and they possessed all powers of 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 other 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 sixteen persons. At the meeting at which this was done, however, the rights of the freemen were Hutchinson, Hart's Con- I, No. 103. The freemen of Massachu setts. Fiske's New England, 105-109. Their gov ernment of the colony. Winthrop's New England; Hart's Contemporaries, I, No. 107. greatly lessened, and the provision was made that in the future only Puritan church members could be admitted to the franchise. A few years later the freemen became restless. They demanded a sight of the charter and at once saw that the supreme power was with the assistants and the freemen in the General Court or meeting of the stockholders of the company. They repealed the law restricting John Winthrop, Governor of Massachusetts the powers of the freemen, and elected Thomas Dudley governor, in place of Winthrop. To this latter step they had been provoked by the declaration of 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 a tendency toward democratic ideas showed itself in Massachusetts. The freemen soon found it inconvenient to exercise their 1631] Attacks on Massachusetts 73 ment estab hard-won powers of government: it was expensive to travel Representato Boston from the towns which soon sprang up all along tive governthe seacoast; and it was dangerous to leave their families lished, 1634. unprotected. To overcome these inconveniences, they established 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 established 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 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. chusetts, sodes, I, 240; 111-113. There seem to have been two parties in the Council for Gorges atNew England: one of them was composed of Puritans, tacks Massaas the Earl of Warwick, from whom, as president, the grant of Massachusetts had been obtained; the other faction 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 and obtained an order from the court of King's Bench which was intended to be the beginning of the end of the Massachusetts Bay Company. 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 Gardiner's 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 order of the king's judges. It was in this year (1635) that the second England. writ for ship money was issued; a monarch who could not pay the expenses of his court without raising a spirit of rebellion among his subjects at home, had no funds with which to wage war on far-off Massachusetts; the colonial authorities, therefore, paid no attention to the commands of Puritan Revolution, or any his tory of Roger Williams at the English government. The "disorders of the mother country," as Winthrop remarked, "were the safeguard of the infant liberties of New England." 63. Roger Williams. Roger Williams, a Puritan minister, came to Massachusetts in 1631. He at once declared it to be wrong for the colonists to attend the parish churches in England, as their habit was when they went back to the home land to bring their families to the colony or to arrange their business affairs. He then went to Plymouth, where his Separatist views found a more sympathetic hearing. Before he had been there long, however, he attacked the legal soundness of every land title in the colony, and asserted that "King James had told a solemn public lie" in declaring in the New England Charter that he was the discoverer of the lands therein granted. Williams maintained that the settlers should have bought their lands of the Indians. Soon afterwards, he returned to Massachusetts and became from Massa- the pastor of the church at Salem. There again he and the leading men of the colony began to disagree. Among As to Roger other things, Williams asserted that the magistrates had no Banished chusetts. Dexter's Williams; Straus's Roger Williams. Providence, 1636. Greene's Rhode Island, 7-16; Rhode Island. power to punish offenses against the Sunday laws. Finally, Williams asked the other ministers to labor with the rulers to bring them to his way of thinking. The magistrates, on their part, ordered Williams to leave the colony; but, as he was in feeble health, they put off the day of his departure until the following spring. They understood that he would refrain from attacking them during the remainder of his stay in the colony; but the disputing began again, and they resolved to send him to England in a ship which was about to sail. Williams heard of their intentions and fled to the woods. 64. Founding of Providence, 1636. Williams then. founded the town of Providence, a few miles south of the Massachusetts line. He "bought the land" of the Indians, as the phrase was. We now know that it was impossible to buy Indian lands, because the natives had no idea of private ownership of land. They understood allotment of land for |