Boston City (part 29 of 41)

In defending the order of the Court in 1637, to the effect that " none should be allowed to inhabite here but by permission of the Magistrates," and in thus vindicating the banishment of the Antinomians, VVinthrop distinctly fell back upon what he believed the proprietary right conferred by the Charter, previously defined. The incorporators, he urged, had secured a common interest in land and goods and in means for securing their own welfare ; and without their full consent no other person could claim to share in their privileges. The welfare of the whole could not be hazarded for the advantage of any individuals. No one, without permission of the proprietors, could come on their soil, take land, or intermeddle with their affairs. It followed, of course, that the proprietors were free, and indeed were bound to keep out and to expel from their society any persons who would be harmful or ruinous to them. " A Commonwealth," he added, " is a great family," and as such is not bound to entertain all comers, nor to receive unwelcome strangers. To this defence Sir Henry Vane wrote a strong and adroitly argued answer, but Winthrop backed his former plea with a rejoinder. By the expansion and warrant of the liberal views which we have reached, through the failure of all restrictive measures for controlling or suppressing perfect religious liberty, we should, of course, assign to Vane the nobler argument. But Winthrop had in view the security of an imperilled State, rather than restraints on conscience.1 anonymous book, issued in 1644 in London, Way Cleared, &c. p. 39; Johnson's IVonderas Antinomians and Familists, and the same working Providence; Mather's Magnalia, vii.

reign, and mine of the Antinomians, Familists, Hutchinson and Wheelwright, are given in \Vinand Libertines that infected the Churches of New throp, i. 248, and in the Records of Mass. i. 207. England ; and another edition, the type new set, was issued the same year. The order of these issues and the purpose of the changes has occasioned some diversity of opinion, and the curious controversy is traced in the Bulletin of the Contemporary documents are given in Hutchin-

The next class of persons, in the character of heretics or " troublers of their peace," to receive grievous treatment from the magistrates of the Puritan Commonwealth, is represented among us now by the denomination of the Baptists, who charge themselves with the grateful obligation of redeeming the memory of the victims from reproach, while exposing the wrong and cruelty visited upon them. Here, again, we must make large allowance for the ill associations connected with names once borne by persons of offensive antecedents in previous years and in other lands, and for the dread of a repetition here of deplorable experiences the tale of which was to the Boston Puritans distressing and horrifying. " Anabaptists " is the word used in our records to define this class of victims. The prefix Ana to the name, with only which we are familiar, designates those who nad been baptized anew, or a second time. The first who bore the name having been baptized as infants, and having come to regard the rite at that time as unscriptural, followed the rule of their conscience in seeking its benefit at the time of their " conversion," in mature years, as a token of their Christian profession. Of course this repetition of the rite was a reflection upon the way of those who practised infant baptism. The proceedings against the innovators here were instituted just about the time when our rulers were most perplexed and dismayed by the experience already referred to, namely, the alarming increase in the number of persons growing up in the colony as unbaptized, because their parents were not members of a church. One might have supposed that the principles of the new heretics would have furnished in some sort a welcome relief under that sad perplexity presented by the growth of a heathen element in the community. But " Anabaptism " was a word which brought with it portentous associations of fanaticism, licentiousness, and utter lawlessness and anarchy to the Puritans. Among the masses early transcript is preserved among the Hutch- 1843, separately, by D. I'ulsifer) ; Thomas Shepinson papers at the State House, and this is ard's Autobiography, first printed 1832, also in which is reprinted by Bell from the Harvard Col- 1777 ; Dawson's Life and Times of Anne Hutchlege copy. Dr. Ellis does not ascribe this book inson; Anderson's Memorable Women of Puritan of pamphlets and tractates dealing with the wild sectaries with which the time was so rife - mentioned on a previous page - was one little volume, copies of which we may be sure had found their way here. Of one of these now before me I transcribe the title : The Dippers dipt, or, The Anabaptists Duck'd and Plung'd over Head and Eares, &c. : The famous History of the frantick Anabaptists, their wild Preachings and Practices in Germany, &c. By Daniel Featley, D.D. London; 1651. With special and minute detail in its repulsive narration it tells of the frantic and delirious excitements wrought among the peasants by Thomas Muncer, the " Prophet John," of Leyden and other fanatics, - " an illiterate, sottish, lying, and blasphemous sect, falsely pretending to divine Visions and Revelations: . . . also an impure and carnall Sect, a cruell and bloudy Sect, a prophane and a sacrilegious Sect, &c." Nor does the fiery tractate fail to give illustrations of each of these epithets.

This is a specimen of the numerous volumes whose now time-stained paper was fresh and white as read by the Boston Puritans, and when instead of lifeless ashes the pages glowed with fire. The word " Anabaptists," to those who put it into our Court records, was one to them thus weighted with dread and dismay and horror. Happily they had no answering experience of the sort even from the most heated of the zealots with whom they .dealt under that name. Cotton Mather wrote, " many of the first settlers in Massachusetts were Baptists, and they were as holy, and watchful, and fruitful and heavenly a people as. any perhaps in the world." There was no complaint, no interference with any individuals espousing the Baptist principles, until they denounced the doctrine and practice of Infant Baptism, threatened divisions in the churches, and set up separate conventicles. Dunster, the President of the College, was proceeded with and displaced only because of an offensive obtrusion of his principles. The Court Record, under date of May, 1646, states that at the County Court at Salem, the previous year, William Witter of Lynn was presented by the grand jury for saying " that they who stayed whiles a child is baptised doe worshipp the devil." Nor would he atone for this grievous affront. It is alleged that Witter was a member of the Baptist Church at Newport, though living at what is now Swampscott, and that being infirm and having sought the sympathy of his brethren, two of them, Holmes and Crandall, with the Pastor, Clarke, had come to pay neighbors. Witter was then under censure of the Court for having called infant baptism "a badge of the whore." Boston had had previous trouble with these visitors. Holmes was " excommunicate," and they came into the jurisdiction at their own peril, adding to their offence by holding a separate conventicle. The intruders were arrested, and being compelled against their will to attend the public meeting in the afternoon, they behaved unseemly. They contrived to hold another meeting at Witter's the next day. The Court sentenced the offenders to pay respectively a fine of five, twenty, and in the case of Holmes, thirty pounds, " or to be well whipped." The fines of Crandall and Clarke were paid, against their wishes, by friends. Holmes, not allowing this in his own case, was cruelly whipped. He had previously been in trouble in Plymouth, and was regarded as a nuisance here. The offences charged on the records of the Court against Clarke, Crandall, and Holmes are as follows : for being " at a Private Meeting at Lin, upon the Lord's day, exercising among themselves ; ... for offensively disturbing the peace of the Congregation at their coming into the Publique Meeting," - which, however, they were forced to attend ; " for saying and manifesting that the church of Lin was not constituted according to the order of the Lord," &c. There was also a " suspition of having their hands in the rebaptising of one, or more, among us."

So far from regarding themselves as " persecutors " in thus dealing with Baptists, our authorities maintained that they were but simply and rightfully defending their own most precious religious principles "and institutions from reproach and contempt by contumelious strangers. In 1644 they had by a law sentenced to banishment all persons who " shall either openly condemn or oppose the baptising of infants, or go about secretly to seduce others from the approbation or use thereof, or shall purposely depart the congregation at the administration of the ordinance, or shall deny the ordinance of magistracy, &c." There had been an earnest " Petition and Remonstrance " against this law ; but it stood in force. The consequence was that if any person in a congregation flouted at the ordinance of infant-baptism, or walked out when it was to be observed, he was proceeded against, and if under covenant might be excommunicated. And then, if those who had been excommunicated set up a " conventicle " of their own, they committed another grievous trespass. It is a sad story. Most pure and excellent and otherwise inoffensive persons were the sufferers, and generally patient ones. But the struggle was a brief one. The Baptists conquered in it, and came to equal esteem and love with their brethren. Their fidelity was one of the needful and effective influences in reducing the equally needful but ineffective intolerance of the Puritan Commonwealth.

Of the then new outburst of heresy exemplified by those who " in contempt were called Quakers " the magistrates and elders of Massachusetts had heard, to their dread and horror, as causing an " intense stir" in England, nearly ten years before any one of them appeared in this colony. To the Puritan exiles their speech and behavior marked them as fanatics of the wildest, most reckless, and pernicious sort. They, too, had " illuminations," " inspirations," and " revelations," the impulses and directions of which they implicitly followed ; and, what to the Puritan turned even their sweetest and most edifying rhapsodies into " ravings and blasphemies," they assigned to the "impellings of the spirit" in them an authority above that of ''the written Word." It will always be a stumbling-block to the unskilled student of our history that the term " Quaker," borne for the last two centuries on this continent, as elsewhere, by a fellowship of men and women eminent for the quietude and loveliness of their graces and virtues, should have come into our local annals first as designating the offenders against charity, moderation, justice, and decency who were dealt with here from 1656 to six years onward. The Boston magistrates, being well-informed about the notions and doings of the " Ranters " in the mother country, dreaded a visit from them with as much dismay as that which apprehended the first coming hither of the cholera. There were many letters of warning received here, like one addressed two years before the first of the sect reached Boston to President Dunster of the College, containing such sentences as these : " A sect called Quakers doe much increase rayleing much att the ministry and refuseing to sho any reverence to magestrates. We hope they wilbe confounded and ashamed off their Tenetts ; butt I could desire thatt some stricter course were taken than is." l Travelling from place to place, the widest journeyings, even beyond the limits of Christendom, " under the leadings of the Lord," with special illumination as to the testimonies they should bear, was the mission of these enthusiasts. As they swayed and shivered under" the pent fires of their inspiration, they received in contumely the name of " Quakers." The prophet trembling from head to foot under his own burden of spirit often acted as a battery on those who listened to and looked on him. It can hardly be considered strange that the Puritan folk, indisposed to take the word of these Quakers as to their special illumination and inspiration in uttering divine rebukes and warnings, regarded them simply as nuisances and firebrands. Their objurgatory denunciation of magistrates and ministers ; their bitter revilings ; their contempt of preaching and ordinances ; their dismal prophesying of awful divine judgments to come upon the colony in the black pox, in pestilences and all dreaded calamities; and their unseemly and indecent behavior, designed to have a symbolic meaning, - exasperated those whom they denounced, beyond the limits of patient endurance. Just a fortnight before the first two Quakers arrived in the Bay a Fast Day had been observed in the colony, in dread of them among other troubles.

They were all of them of low rank, of mean breeding, and illiterate. A magistrate, in rebuking one of them, told him that if he was under " inspiration " he ought at least to use good grammar, " for Balaam's ass did that." Yet we may wonder whether the thought ever occurred to one of the Puritans, stung and goaded by the objurgations and indecency of the Quakers, that the wildest of them said nothing and did nothing for which he had not the full warrant and example - in denunciatory speech and in symbolic meaning of the act of throwing off clothing and smearing the person - of one or another of the Old Testament Prophets. Of these heaven-prompted and heaven-guided rebukers of sin and prophets of righteousness the Puritan read in his Bible with awe-stricken reverence. But a strict and exact imitation of them, in testimony and in uttering the " Burden of the Lord," roused the Puritan to anger and scorn. And why should it not have done so? The Puritans sincerely believed that they had come here under Divine guidance by a holy covenant to plant a city of God in the wilderness. The first generation of their seed was growing up under stern discipline. It was hardly reasonable to ask them to believe also that God was following them up to thwart and overwhelm them by sending in among them a company of erratic prophets, to revile them with all manner of invectives and reproaches against magistrates and churches, and with awful denunciations of judgments and catastrophes. This dread experience would be a repetition to them of what they read in the Gospel narrative, that " Jesus was led up by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness to be put to trial by the Evil Spirit." Nor was it of any use to quote Scripture to the Quakers, or to remind them of the Master's direction to those whom he sent on his work, " that if they were persecuted in one place they should flee to another." This was the very thing the Quakers would not do. They insisted upon being persecuted by staying where they knew they would be persecuted, and by returning over and over again if forcibly driven out. The Puritan being the extremest literalist in the interpretation of the Bible, with no skill or fancy in catching from it the gleams and enlargings of high spiritual insight, through which, not infrequently, an illiterate Quaker would soar into realms of the loftiest and serenest truth, would turn away his ear from listening to what to him was blasphemy. The Quaker, in his turn, was stiffened into reproach and daring defiance, by which he made himself an equally tormenting and damaging foe as he would have been if the energy and spite which he threw into his words had gone into his muscles and fists as a pugilist. Perhaps an ordinary reader of the minute details of the antagonism between our original Puritanism and Quakerism would find himself alternating between an amused feeling over the ludicrous incidents in the conflict, and pangs of profound regret over the wrong and passion which it involved. The issue presented seemed to have a resemblance to the mechanical problem of what will be the effect if an irresistible body strikes an immovable body. The Quakers, either of set purpose, or by the consistent working out of the mission to which they believed themselves divinely called, planted themselves on the resolve that, through whatever penalties of punishment, pain or death, the faithful discharge of their duty should lead them, they would break down the intolerant spirit of Puritanism. Not till they had done that would they keep silence from prophesying, or care much about selecting soft and gentle terms of utterance, or for staidness and inoffensiveness of demeanor. Candor will hardly go wide astray in judgment, if, using the light of those times to see by, and having in view the actual circumstances and the relations of parties, the blame and censure for what was done be equally apportioned between them. The crowning folly or iniquity in the course of the Puritans was in following up their penal inflictions, through banishments, imprisonments, fines, scourgings, and mutilations, to the execution on the gallows of four martyr victims. But what shall we say of the persistency, the exasperating contemptuousness and defiance, the goading, maddening obstinacy, and reproaching invectives of those who drove the magistrates, against their will, to vindicate their own insulted authority and to stain our annals with innocent blood? Cotton Mather called them an " enchanted people."

The writer of these pages, after an exhaustive study of this episode of our history for another purpose, has been led to adopt this view of the equal folly and culpability of both parties in this dire tragedy.1 Calm selfpossession, indifference, or an exercise of patience on the part of the magistrates on the first appearance of these enthusiasts, or a forbearing, considerate, and gentle method adopted by those who believed they had a divine mission to discharge, would have averted the catastrophe. But these were the very graces and qualities which were on either side the most lacking. The authentic reports of " the ravings and blasphemies " associated with the " Ranters " in Old England made the magistrates alarmed by the exposure of their colony to peculiar perils from the presence of such an exciting and mischievous element, when it should manifest itself here. They were well aware that they had among their restless spirits inflammaable material, and men and women whose Puritan and Biblical training had quickened them to an alert and inquisitive interest in controversy, speculation, and pious mysticisms. Their worst fears were realized when they found that the Quaker spirit was contagious and catching among a class of their own citizens. Indeed, it appears from the legislation and proceedings of the authorities against the avowed Quakers, that their intent was as much or more to prevent the dissemination of their notions as to visit penalties upon the original utterers of them. The fervid "testimonies" and the stinging objurgations screamed out by the Quakers as they were led along the streets, or as they burst upon the assembly in the meetinghouse, or engaged the ears of passers-by from between the bars of their prisons, were sure of meeting sympathy, secret or avowed, from occasional witnesses ; and this sympathy was often made deep and tender by the passive submissiveness and gentleness of the sufferers under barbarous cruelties. The magistrates being on the alert for the intrusion of these dreaded of events after his return to England, addressed He died of apoplexy, and the friends of the Quaka manly letter of remonstrance to the two teach- ers, after the fashion of the day, pronounced it a fanatics, easily rid themselves of the first of the sort, as they arrived by sea. They were retained on shipboard ; and the masters of vessels who brought them hither were compelled, under penalty, to carry them away.

Sir Richard Saltonstall.1

1 | The present representative of the family, Leverett Sallonstall, Esq., kindly furnished a photograph of the original portrait of his ancestor by Rembrandt, from which this engraving is taken. It is in his possession. There are copies of it in the gallery of the Historical Society and in Memorial Hall at Cambridge. It has been engraved on steel in Drake's Boston, p. 122, and elsewhere. Saltonstall came over with Winthrop, but returned to England the next year. He was born in 1586, and died about 1658. The family descent is followed in the N. E. Hist, and Geiteal. Reg., 1847; Bond's Water tmvit ; and Drake's Boston, p. 68. - ED.

But very soon the pertinacious troublers found an access into the jurisdiction from Rhode Island, - that harborage of all sorts of persons " unsettled in judgement." Well would it have been for our magistrates if they had followed a hint conveyed to them, with sly humor, in the shrewd and sagacious reply of the authorities of Rhode Island to a request sent to them from Massachusetts for co-operating measures of repression and punishment against the Quakers. The answer was, that they had found that the Quakers were a sort of people that did affect persecution ; that they lived by inviting and provoking it; and that they had already come to loathe Rhode Island because they were allowed full liberty to vent their prophecyings and revelations. But, most unfortunately, our authorities thought and acted differently. They steadily pursued a course of increased severity and harshness in the penalties denounced and inflicted by their laws, - though always ready and willing to suspend them, if the offenders would go away and stay away. But this was the very thing the Quakers, in avowed fidelity to conscience and their mission, would not do. It would be a weak and fatal concession to the fear of man, and a timid surrender of their solemn trust. Their patient resolve of spirit and their bitterness and provocativeness of speech and behavior were alike stiffened and aggravated. They denounced the ministers as " Baal's priests; " " the seed of the Serpent; " " the brood of Ishmael," &c. Here is a description drawn by one of them of a church member: -

" A man that hath a covetous and deceitful rotten heart, lying lips, which abound among them, and a smooth, fawning, flattering tongue, and short hair, and a deadly enmity against those that are called Quakers and others that oppose their wayes, - such a hypocrite is a fit man to be a member of any N. England church." l

The Thursday lecture in Boston was a solemn occasion, which drew the magistrates and people to listen to the words of their preacher. One may well imagine the consternation and rage attendant upon this incident, as related in one of the Quakers' Journals : -

" 13th of 2d Month, 1658. Sarah Gibbins and Dorothy Waugh spoke at Lector. Death fed Death, through the painted sepulchre John Norton " 1 [the minister].

" J. Rons and H. Norton were moved to go to the great meeting-house at Boston upon one of their Lector days, where we found John Norton their teacher set up, who like a babling Pharisee run over a vain repetition near an hour long, like an impudent smooth fac'd harlot, who was telling her Paramoors a long fair story of her husband's kindness, while nothing but wantonness and wickedness is in her heart," &C.1

It may readily be allowed that the magistrates and ministers were, by no rule of reason or religion, under obligation to subject themselves to such effrontery and insult as this. And when such wild enthusiasts, generally women, appeared in the streets and meeting-houses in a state of nudity, or in ghostly sheets, with their faces smeared with black paint, "prophetically," the fright and horror of the spectacle might well justify the severest measures to prevent its repetition. Among a people under the cloud of many superstitions and dreads, such exhibitions were portentous in causing hysterical shocks and agonizing fears. Even about the beginning of the next century, Judge Sewall records the dismay and panic caused by the rushing in of such Quaker prophets into the assembly of the South Church. The magistrates of the earlier period, while personally exasperated almost beyond endurance, felt themselves stirred by the obligations of their trust to punish such desperate offenders. Leniency and tolerance, under the circumstances, would have seemed to them a crime. Even the gentle-spirited Roger Williams, under a sore trial of his patience by the Quakers, allowed himself to write of them : " They are insufferably proud and contemptuous. I have, therefore, publicly declared myself that a due and moderate restraint and punishment of these incivilities, though pretending conscience, is so far from persecution, properly so called, that it is a duty and command of God unto all mankind, first in Families, and thence into all mankinde Societies." *

Somewhere beneath the soil of Boston Common lie the ashes of four so-called Quakers, - three men and one woman, - who were cast into their rude graves after they had been executed on the gallows, between the years 1659 and i66i.2 This death penalty was the culmination of the suc-

1 George Fox digged out of his Bnrrowes. execution drew not a few Quakers into the There is a witticism in this title, referring to Bur- town, "bringing linen wherein to wrap the roughs, the companion and co-preacher with Fox. dead bodies," and " to look the bloody laws in [Coddington, who had been a Boston merchant, the face." There is in the Mass. Archives, x., having become one of the founders of Rhode a characteristic letter addressed to the Governor Island, was chosen its Governor, and adopted

2 [The crowd of North-enders was so great ecution that Mary Dyer sat on the gallows with returning from two of these executions, Oct. 27, a rope about her neck while the others were 1659, when William Robinson and Marmaduke swung off. She was sent out of the jurisdiction, Stevenson were hung, that the drawbridge on but, returning the next June, finally suffered the Ann Street (now North Street), over the canal last penalty. There is in the Mass. Archives, x., which made the North End an island, fell a petition from her husband, W. Dyer, asking through under the weight. Strange to say, the that his wife may be spared. Dr. Ellis prints it cessive inflictions to which Puritan legislation vainly had recourse to be rid of an intolerable plague. It was denounced upon such as, returning a fourth time after punishment and banishment, refused, even when on the gallows, to keep their lives on condition that they would not again obtrude themselves where they were so unwelcome. Their refusal to comply with this condition convinced the magistrates, who " desired their lives absent rather than their deaths present," that " they courted death and thrust themselves upon it." Some readers may find relief in the fact that, even after the long trial of the patience of the magistrates, the infliction of the death penalty was effected only by the vote of a bare majority of the Court, and was most vehemently opposed by earnest remonstrances from some of the best people.1 Our historian, Hutchinson, rightly balances " the strange delusion the Quakers were under in courting persecution, and the imprudence of the authorities in gratifying this humor as far as their utmost wishes could carry them." One may all the more regret the heady temper, the rancor, and the violence shown on either side, because the parties were so admirably in his Lowell lecture on " The Treatment of In- Hist, and Geneal. Keg. v. 465 ; Drake's Boston, truders and Dissentients," p. 123. Her story is p. 345. An account of Upsall, with a view of the told in Anderson's Memorable Women of Puritan Times. A posthumous tract by Marmaduke Stevenson, entitled A Call from Death to Life, London, 1660, is one of the rarities of Americana.

stone on his grave in the Copp's 1 1 ill i^ burial-ground, is given in the N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Keg., January, 1880. There is in the Mass. Archives, x., a petition from his wife Dorothy, his son-in-law William Greenough, and Upsall's children, asking for the revoking of the decree of banishment. The Court refused it. Mr. Rowland II. Allen, in his New England Tragedies in Prose,

Catalogue, No. 3,571. It has appended to it two letters from Peter Pearson, giving " a brief relation of the manner of the martyrdom " of Stevenson and Robinson. It is noted in the Sewall Papers, 5. 82, 91, that in 1685 the Quakers asked permission "to enclose the ground the hanged Quakers are buried in, under or near the gallows, with pales." It was denied " as very inconvenient ; " but nevertheless a " few feet of ground was enclosed with boards." - Eo.J

" Four already have been slain ; And others banished upon pain of death. But they come back again to meet their doom, Bringing the linen for their winding sheets. We must not go too far. In truth I shrink From shedding of more blood. The people murmur At our severity."

But Endicott was the most bitter and persistent advocate of extreme measures. The Nicholas Upsall of this tragedy, who was imprisoned and banished for harboring Quakers, was a veritable citizen, whose blood still runs among us. N. E.

Boston, 1869, has followed out the historical incidents which Longfellow weaves into his plot. Hawthorne uses these Quaker persecutions as the basis of his " Gentle Boy," - one of his Twice Told Tales. - Ei).| qualified for testing their issues by disputation and the tongue. Richard Baxter foiled the weapon of one very persistent Quaker, who had been arguing that all men were illumined by the inner light, by asking the question, "If all have it, why may not I have it?"

What would have been the final working out of the pitched conflict between Quaker contumacy and Puritan persistency, had they been left to the action of their own energies without the intervention of an external mediating agency, it would hardly have been difficult for any but the most resolute and stern of the magistrates to have forecast. The Quakers would have conquered by simple endurance. Their weapons were what in the immediate future were to be recognized as vital and effective truths. But one of the sufferers having gone to England and gained access to Charles II. brought back from the monarch a peremptory command that the death penalty against the Quakers should be no more inflicted, and that those who were under judgment or in prison should be sent to England for trial.2 The King's interference with the stern rule of the Puritan Commonwealth also involved the immediate removal of the restriction of the franchise to churchmembers, and its extension to all citizens who were in other respects entitled to it. The Court, however, managed to evade the concession here required of them, by substituting conditions which substantially retained the rigid

1 [It is not worth while here to follow out the bibliographical intricacies of the literature of these Quaker persecutions. The reader is referred to Dr. H. M. Dexter's Bibliography of Congregationalism ; J. Smith's Catalogue of Friends' Books ; and some of the rarer books noted in the Brinley Catalogue, ii. 100. Of the older books, G. Bishop's New England Judged, Part I., 1661, and Part II., 1667, - both parts with additions, 1703, of which a copy, with many other of the Quaker productions, is in the possession of Dr. Ellis, - puts the Quakers' side, while the Boston minister, . John Norton, on whom the burden of the unhappy conflict fell, in behalf of the churches offered their apology in his Heart of New England rent at the Blasphemies of the Present Generation, Cambridge, 1659, - a book published by authority and at the public charge, and for which the Court made him a grant of land. Not much reading on either side is edifying, and the joint production of John Kous and others, New England a Degenerate /'/iiiif, London, 1659, is worth attention chiefly for its record of the laws and proceedings of the colonies against the Quakers. We also owe to Rous, Fox, and others another harrowing narrative of their sufferings, printed in London in 1659, as The Secret IVorkes of a Cruel People. Their own later chroniclers always cover these New England experiences, as in William Sewel's History of the Quakers, 1722, &c., fourth and fifth books, and Jos. Besse' s Sufferings of the People

2 [Dr. Palfrey, Hist, of New England, ii. 519, says: "The resolution to abstain from further capital punishments had been taken some months before, though the magistrates, perhaps, were not indisposed to appeal to the King's injunction, rather than avow a change of judgment on their own part" The letter of the King was intrusted to one Samuel Shattuck, who had been banished, and he, with other Quakers, arrived in Boston in 1661. One of the disturbers at least, Winlock Christison, recanted a little too <arly, or he might have enjoyed the triumph of his release without so satisfying the magistrates as he did. - Ko.]

method of securing the ballot. On this point - the vital and all-essential security of their original polity - they were soon compelled to yield, because the royal mandate was reinforced by so strong a party of the uncovenanted non-voters within the colony insisting upon their rights. Not till the provincial was substituted for the colonial charter was the spell of the Puritan domination effectually broken; and then the Puritan Commonwealth was prostrated. The survival from it in tradition, in influence, in the sway of manifold habits and customs, and in the lessons of childhood retaining their power over those who lived to advanced age, perpetuated very much of its austere and chars^ /^ r\ acteristic qualities in this community. Nor

It may have been well that, in the train and succession of the experimentings on the theory of the model for planting a State, secure arid prosperous, what we regard now as fundamentally an erroneous and impracticable one was so thoroughly tested. An earnest and lofty purpose, demanding high virtues, zeal, self-consecration, and stern fidelity could alone have prompted the master spirits of this colony, and sustained them under the exactions of their enterprise. They were, for their time, intelligent and wise men ; and by the best standards of any age their characters in their intents and aims - of integrity, sincerity, devoutness, and unselfishness - must be adjudged to have been elevated and pure. They showed heroic powers of endurance; they were simple and frugal in their mode of life ; " they scorned delights and lived laborious days ; " and in their generation, more resolutely and disinterestedly than any other community of men and women known to us, they had regard, in all that they devised and did, far more for the welfare and advantages of their posterity than for their own. How far their erroneous and impracticable experiment of constructing a State from a Church was the consequence or the cause of the limitations of wisdom, the superstitions, and the errors which appear in their policy, it might be difficult fairly to decide. Their thorough trial of what proved to be an impracticable theory may help to reconcile us to all the risks and exposures of our present system, which recognizes only secular interests. Large allowance should be made by us for what was so ungenial, gloomy, and repulsive in the Puritan character, as manifested during the brief period of intolerance and severity in their history, on the score of the harshness and rudeness of the circumstances under which the first generation born on the soil grew into life. The first comers had sweet and tender memories of dear old England. Their children had none of these. Their childhood was not nursed on milk. They saw no games or pageants, no holidays or festivals, no gray old churches or ivy-clad castles. They had no picture-books or romances. The shadows of the wilderness hung over them, and the ways through it were lonely and full of terrors. A sombre domestic discipline saddened their years of subjection. The weariness of their long day-tasks was compensated by no evening jollities. These sober and grave influences clouded their lives, and passed into maturer austerities in their characters. Religion had to them more of frights and bugbears than of fair visions and sweet solaces. The charter of the colony assigned the terms for holding its Courts, as " Hilary, Easter, Trinity, and Michaelmas." But only in the charter, not elsewhere in the records, do those words and the things and associations of which they are the symbols appear. The children grown here never heard them. The dispensation of religion to them offered them lessons above their comprehension, divested of all attractions in the mode of their teaching, - dry, dreary, and saddening.

There is an offset of a generous and grateful character to be made for all that is just in the severity of censure visited upon these Puritan legislators for their narrowness and bigotry, their rigid and harsh austerity against those who disturbed their peace, and yet so patiently suffered the penalties of their protests, their dissent, and their heresies. These disturbers were dealt with as enthusiasts and fanatics, at a time and under circumstances of dread experience that made enthusiasm and fanaticism most alarming in their impulses, methods, and tendencies, as destructive of domestic, social, and civil order. But while the Puritan outlook was narrow in that direction, it was broad and generous in another. They did not stand as champions of ignorance, indifference, or the conservatism of prejudice and error. While we call them superstitious, we have to remind ourselves that there was nothing to them more odious or debasing than what they themselves, by the degree of their enlightenment, had come to regard as superstition. This they identified with ignorance and folly. And it was because of this that the Puritans came nearer than any other class of religionists to making an idol of knowledge, of the exercise of mental freedom and vigor, and of the education of the young. The unrest of Puritanism, its constant labor to verify and certify its fundamentals of doctrine and dispensation, kept the intellect in full vigor, and prompted the inquisitive spirit which gradually released it from a slavish bondage. Certain it is, that wherever in Christendom we trace the presence and influence of the doctrinal system and discipline characteristic of Puritanism, - as in Geneva, Holland, Scotland, Old and New England, - we find tokens of intellectual vigor in the commanding minds of statesmen, scholars, and men of affairs. And consequent upon this quality has been their noble zeal to promote education, knowledge, learning, in all their ranges, so that their elevating influence may be shared by all classes of the people. The college planted in the wilderness by the magistrates of Boston, and the system of common schools provided by the Court of the Puritan colony, attest that its founders recognized in education the only safeguard of liberty. They would not have dreaded lest freedom in thought and policy should exceed due restraints, provided only that they could anticipate and guide its development by true enlightenment. It is easy to reconcile the professed heavenly-mindedness of the Puritans with their manifest regard for worldly thrift. They confessedly recognized the mundane virtues ; and we, their posterity, share largely in the account of their having done so. There was candor as well as shrewdness in the avowal made by the patriarch White for our colonists, that " nothing sorts better with Piety than Competency," - a truth which the prophet Agur had, long before their day, uttered by inspiration.

As to the character of the community, - the qualities and habits of the people; the tone of daily life; the relations between individuals and classes ; the public and private virtues, with the offset of evils and errors, which especially manifested themselves in this Puritan Commonwealth in anything peculiar and distinctive, - it would require more space than can here be given for a fair exposition of the subject. One might be prompted to institute a comparison, either in general terms or in details, with other contemporary colonial communities where quite other than Puritan principles and usages controlled the religious, civil, and social life of the people. This, too, would take us beyond our limits. Had this old town of Boston, with the surrounding municipalities which are essentially its offshoots, been left to a natural process of development by modifications working from within of its original elements, and an increase of its homogeneous stock by generations, keeping its homogeneous character, we might then have been able to trace and define our essential Puritan heritage in its present fruitage. The flood of foreign immigration which has poured in upon us since the beginning of this century has vastly qualified, though it has not neutralized, the original qualities of the old stock. We must reconcile ourselves to any regrets over a promising but arrested development from our heritage by gratefully recognizing its attractiveness for aliens.

Chapter Iv By The Rev. Henry W. Foote

THE noble vision of the Puritan Commonwealth, compacted of souls united in faith and doctrine, in which Church and State should be substantially one, proved impracticable before the first generation of the Puritans had begun to pass from the stage. It has been related in a former chapter1 how the successive controversies with the followers of Mrs. Hutchinson, with the Baptists, and with the Quakers, demonstrated more and more clearly the impossibility of such a permanent accord of the whole population on religious questions as was vitally necessary for the permanence of the Theocracy. The fixedness with which the policy of repression was pursued until the English Government interfered, although ineffectual to do more than postpone the religious disintegration which nothing could ultimately prevent, had one further effect of immense importance. It secured time to impress on the community a marked character which two centuries since elapsing, with all their modifications of faith and of the population, have not been able to efface. During nearly half a century the Puritan spirit had exercised an unrestricted sway, while the new community was hardening from gristle into bone. The Boston of 365,000 inhabitants to-day, with its mingling of many races and all religions and no religion, is marked profoundly by its inheritances from the temper, spirit, and belief of the Boston which, at the close of the seventeenth century, was a little town of less than 7,000 souls.

The period of forcible repression of dissent from the Established Church of New England was succeeded by a period in which the Protestant bodies gained a firm and recognized footing in Boston. The history of the successive steps by which this was established, much against the will and to the sore reluctance of the dominant powers, is of course less picturesque and exciting than the chapter of punishments, oppositions, and even martyrdoms in which the Quaker and the Baptist conquered by enduring. It is, however, an important chapter in the history of Boston, and interesting not only as a chapter of ecclesiastical antiquities, but as illustrating how, in the 1 [Chap. III., by Rev. George E. Ellis, D.D.]

The growth of the town in numbers had necessitated the organization of a second church in 1650. For twenty years the "Old Meeting-house" had accommodated the whole population.

No record exists of the first occupation of the Second Church, which was built of wood at the North End (North Square), and thence derived the name, the " North Church," by which it was usually known.1 This part of the town held at this time about thirty householders, and there was prospect of a speedy increase. The first sermon in the new house was preached June 5, 1650. The services were conducted by one of the brethren, Michael Powell, till 1655, when the Rev. John Mayo was ordained as its first minister. The splendid roll of its ministers gave it a special distinction : it has been called " the Church of the Mathers," four of its early pastors having belonged to that family, who held the pulpit for seventythree out of the first ninety-one years of the church.

Of the third church gathered in Boston, Rev. Dr. Wisner2 says: "Like too many other churches of Christ, it originated in bitter contentions among those who are bound by their profession, as well as by the precept of heaven, to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." These contentions " were not local or of sudden production, but originated in the first ecclesiastical institutions of the country, and were spread through the whole of New England."

The limitation of the political franchise to those who were churchmembers, made by an order of the second General Court in 1631, continued in effect until the Charter Government was dissolved, since even after it was apparently repealed at the urgency of King Charles II., in 1664, a certificate was required from the ministers to the " orthodox principles " and good lives of candidates for freedom. From the beginning, a considerable and ever increasing number of inhabitants were disfranchised by this test; many of the children of the early settlers could not satisfy the tests for admission to the church when they grew up ; and as baptism could not be had for the children of those who were not church-members, a generation arose who were largely excluded alike from religious and civil privileges. An earnest effort, led by Robert Child and others, was made in 1646, by a petition to the General Court, "that civil liberty and freedom might be forthwith granted to all truly English ; and that all members of the Church of England or Scotland, not scandalous, might be admitted to the privileges of the churches of New England." The petitioners, who threatened to appeal to the Parliament of England, and who represented a wide-spread discontent, were denied, their papers seized, and themselves fined ; while the political troubles in the mother-country rendered all appeal hopeless.1

But a grievance so well grounded could not be permanently repressed. The growing sentiment that " all baptized persons, not scandalous in life and formally excommunicated, ought to be considered members of the church in all respects except the right of partaking of the Lord's Supper," though strenuously opposed by lovers of the old way, finally induced the Court of Massachusetts to call a General Council in 1657, which met at Boston, delegates from Connecticut also taking part. This Council determined that those who had been baptized in infancy were therefore to be regarded as members of the church, and entitled to its privileges, with the exception of the Lord's Supper, including baptism for their children. Such an innovation on the earlier practice roused yet more bitter opposition. A second Synod was obliged to be held in 1662, at which this decision was substantially reaffirmed. Vigorous protest was, however, made by some of the most eminent pastors, who published writings in opposition ; and among them Rev. John Davenport of New Haven, " the greatest of the anti-synodists." The churches of Massachusetts were divided among themselves, whether to receive or reject conclusions of the Synod. In the First Church of Boston, while a majority favored them, the influence of their pastor, the venerated Wilson, preserved the peace. His death, Aug. 7, 1667, at the age of seventy-nine,2 left a vacancy which was filled by the choice of Mr. Davenport, then seventy years old. The prominent position of this eminent man as an advocate of the stricter side in the con- *£r troversy which was agitating New England * occasioned the most earnest opposition to his settlement. The church was divided, the former minority becoming the majority. Mr. Davenport accepted their call and came to Boston, where he died little more than a year after beginning his ministry.3 But the dissatisfied minority did not

1 [Beside Child, William Vassal! and Sam- ministers of Christ, rested from his labors and uel Maverick were engaged in this movement, sorrowes, beloved and lamented of all, and very Drake, Boston ; Sumner, East Boston ; Win- honourably interred ye day following." N. E. throp, New England, &c. Cf. Colonel Aspin- Hist, and Geneal. Reg., July, 1880, p. 297. Seethe wall on "William Vassall no factionist," in genealogy in the Heraldic Journal, ii. 182. - ED.] Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., March, 1863. - ED.] 3 [Davenport died March n, 1670, and lies

2 [A daughter of Wilson married the Rev. buried in the Chapel burial ground, nearly oppo- Samucl Danforth of Roxbury, and their son, the site where he lived on Tremont Street, on an Rev. John Danforth, was the minister of Dor- estate that remained for many years in the poschester, 1682-1730. The former thus records session of the First Church, and where several Wilson's death in his church records: "7'ii6m- of Davenport's successors lived. Drake, Land- 67. About two of ye clock in ye Morning, my marks, p. 55. The Roxbury records make this honoured Father, Mr John Wilson, Pastour to mention of his death: "?g, im, 13. Mr John y= Church of Boston, aged about 78 yeares and Davenport was taken with yc dead palsey on ye a half, a man eminent in Faith, love, humility, right side, and 2 days after, viz. on ye isth- of ye self-denyal, prayer, soundnes of minde, zeal for first moneth, died, and was buried on ye 22dof God, liberality to all men, esp'ly to ye sts and ye same. Aged 73." N. E. Hist, and Geneal.

rest here.1 Twenty-eight in number, with one member of the Charlestown Church, they met at Charlestown, probably to avoid, by holding their meeting in another county, the law which required that the magistrates should be consulted before forming another church. Their application to the First Church to be dismissed for this purpose was refused, whereupon they called a council of other churches, by whose advice they organized themselves in due form as the "Third Church in Boston." Thomas Thacher became their first minister in February, 1670. The publication of protests and counter-protests enlisted the whole colony on one side or the other, as it was seen that " the favorers of the old church were against the Synod, and those of the new church were for it."

Nor was the opposition confined to words. It is probable that the "imprisoning of parties" to which a letter of Randolph refers indicates that the members of the new church were punished in this way for their proceeding without consent of the authorities. Governor Bellingham being strenuous for the First Church, of which he was a member, summoned his Council to prohibit the erection of the new meeting-house. The Council, however, was unwilling to take this extreme ground, and the consent of the selectmen of Boston being obtained to the erection of " another Meeting- House in this town," the Third Church was built on what is now the corner of Washington and Milk streets. The land for the purpose was given by Madam Norton, who, though the widow of a former minister of the First Church, was in warm sympathy with the seceders from it.

The dissension agitated the " House of Deputies," who, in 1670, adopted a report from " a committee to inquire into the prevailing evils which had been the cause of the displeasure of God against the land," explicitly condemning the transaction by which the new church was constituted, " as irregular, illegal, and disorderly." But the next election reversed this

1 [It appears from an entry by Danforth in discussed learnedly by Dr. Dexter in his Conthe Roxbury church records, that " a Council of gregationalism as s£en in its Literature. - Eu.]

The Rise Of Dissenting Faiths

The troubled waters, however, subsided but slowly. The old church refused to have any ecclesiastical relations with its rebellious daughter. Three times it denied dismission to the wives of the brethren who had withdrawn to form the new church, who naturally wished to follow their husbands ; nor was it until the forebodings of an .invasion of the ecclesiastical unity of New England by the dreaded Episcopacy of the mothercountry grew into certainty, that the breach was healed. In May, 1682, Edward Randolph wrote to the Bishop of London : -

" We have in Boston one Mr. Willard, a minister, brother to Major Dudley ; he is a moderate man, and baptizeth those who are refused by the other churches, for which he is hated. There was a great difference between the old church and the members of the new church about baptisme and their members joyning in full communion with either church ; this was soe high that there was imprisoning of parties and great disturbances, but now, heereing of my proposals for ministers to be sent over, . . . they are now joyned together, about a fortnight ago, and pray to God to confound the devices of all who disturbe their peace and liberties." 1

It has been already related how2 the period of active persecution of obnoxious modes of faith had closed : the two heresies which had been most strenuously resisted, the Baptist and the Quaker, had rooted themselves in the soil, in spite of all opposition. The former built a place of worship in 1680, which, though closed for a time by order of the General Court, was soon peaceably occupied.3 The Quakers had a regular place of meeting as early as 1677, and in 1697 they erected the first meetinghouse built of brick in Boston, on a lot in Brattle Street.4 The Society of Friends continued in considerable numbers until after the Revolution, but then greatly diminished, so much that soon after, the beginning of this century they ceased to hold regular meetings.

But bitter to the strict followers of " the old way " as were these indications of the relaxing Puritanism,5 the rooting of the Church of England here was most bitter of all.

The people of the sturdy Puritan stock are not blameworthy for desiring to keep the country of their own way of belief, if they could. For nearly half a century they had had the opportunity to grow far toward an independent na- land, iii. 91; Dr. Neale's Discourse on the two and about 1827 to Milton Place, hundredth anniversary of the foundation of the 5 The formation of the Church in Brattle Sq.

tion on that ecclesiastical basis, and the presence of the Church of England would be a perpetual sign that this state of things was ended. Nor is it strange that they feared many evils from the admission of the Book of Common Prayer which never came to pass. But they resolutely shut their eyes to the fact that there were those among them who had an equal right with themselves to such religious institutions as they might choose.1 The Church of England had the misfortune to be, in the estimation of the mass of Ncw- Englanders, a part of the tyranny of the Stuarts. If it had been more free from such associations, perhaps they would have feared and hated it less, nor would some of its earliest promoters have been so zealous in its behalf.

The controversy in the reign of Charles II. could only end in one way. Englishmen must surely have the rights of Englishmen in an English colony, and among these none was dearer to some than the right to worship God according to the hallowed and familiar form established in England itself. Yet although there were not a few in Boston who desired it, " most of the inhabitants," says Hutchinson, "who were upon the stage in 1686 had never seen a Church of England Assembly." Edward Randolph discovered in his first visit here in 1676 that there were laws forbidding the observance of " Christmas day or any like festivity," " the solemnization of marriage by any person but a Magistrate," and confining the suffrage to church-members, as well as on other points which contravened the Royal prerogative. The result partly of Randolph's persistency in his frequent crossings of the ocean, and partly of the King's own growing certainty of the intractable stubbornness of the people with whom he had to deal, was a steady pressure on our ancestors to alter their laws in these regards. In November, 1678, the General Court appointed a Fast Day, to beseech the Lord " that he will not take away his holy gospel, and it be his good will yet to continue our liberties civil and ecclesiastical to us and our children after us." The times were dark indeed for them, - Charles Stuart on the throne, and they too weak to resist him with open war.

" The thoughtful observer," says Dr. Greenwood,. " will mark the strange processes by which the human mind is often forced to the most simple and excellent conclusions. He will see arbitrary power from another country contending against arbitrary power here, and the results of these conflicting and angry authorities to be toleration, liberty, and peace." 2

In 1679 a number of persons residing in Boston petitioned the King " that a Church might be allowed them for the exercise of religion according to the Church of England." Not until 1681 was the law which forbade the keeping of Christmas repealed. In 1685 Sewall wrote in his diary, - " Xr- 25, Friday. Carts come to Town, and Shops open as is usual: some somehow observe y6 day ; but are vex'd I believe that y- Body of ye People profane it, and blessed be God no authority yet to compell them to keep it."

1 Lechford, in 1644, says that one sixth of the population were church-members ; Randolph, in 1 686. states the numlier at one tenth. - Greenwood, A'in:fs C/iafel, p. 14.

Edward Randolph, " his shuttle of mischief being," in 1682, on this " side of the ocean, still working in its loom of hate and revenge," l - doubtless, also, of loyalty to King and Church, after the high-handed fashion of loyalty with which such a man would serve a Stuart king, - wrote two letters to the Bishop of London, urging measures to establish the Church of England here. z

" In my attendance on your lordship, I often exprest that some able ministers might be appoynted to performe the officies of the church with us. The maine obstacle was how they should be maintayned. I did formerly and doe now propose, that a part of that money sent over hither, and pretended to bee expended among the Indians, may be ordered to goe towards that charge. . . . Since wee are here immediately under your lordship's care, I with more freedome press for able and sober ministers, and wee will contribute largely to their maintenance ; but one thing will mainely helpe, when no marriages hereafter shall be allowed lawfull but such as are made by the ministers of the Church of England."

And July 14, i682,3 besides urging the bringing a quo warranto against the Massachusetts charter, to " disenable many ... of the faction . . . from acting further in a public station," he says : -

" Wee have advice ... that your lordship hath remembered us and sent over a minister with Mr. Cranfield ; . . . the very report hath given great satisfaction to many hundreds whose children are not baptized, and to as many who never, since they came out of England, received the sacraments. ... If we are misinformed concerning your lordship's sending over a minister, be pleased to commiserate our condition, and send us over a sober, discreet gentleman. Your lordship hath now good security, as long as their agents are in England, for his civil treatment by the contrary party ; he will be received by all honest men with hearty respects and kindness, and if his majesty's laws (as none but fanatics question) be of force with us, we could raise a sufficient maintenance for clivers ministers out of the estates of those whose treasons have forfeited them to his majesty."

No wonder that good Mr. Sewall and the rest of his Puritan fellow-worshippers with him looked darkly on the man who was busy among them with such thoughts as these. For though they could not read his thoughts or the letters which their descendants can read, they knew him as one who hated their ways and looked on them as more than half rebels, and who met their resolute wills against high prerogative in Church and Crown with a will every whit as resolute as theirs. Still the "sober and discreet" minister did not come. Randolph wrote again, and described the religious condition of the country at this time : -

" New Engw is devided into 7 small colonyes or Gouernm15, at present managed by men of weake and inconsiderable parts ; most of them hauing different Lavves and methods of executing them. They are devided into Presbyterians, Independants, anabptists, quakers, seauenth day men : who are some of them in all govermts : such of the Church of England tho' the cheife men and of good parts not appearing soe till a regulation in governm' from hence directed. Our cheife colony is that of Boston, made so by a continuall concourse of people from all parts ; they driue a great trade in ye world, and in deed give Lawes to all the rest ; here all is managed by their Clergye, without whom the magistrates venture not to act, as in the late example of this gov' upon receipt of his maties letter, &5. Here noe children are baptized but the children of Church members : some giue a larger latitude and admitt the gran-children of C. members, others the children of such who own the church and promise to Hue vnder their watch.

" But none in any of the colonyes are admitted to the Eucharist but as are in full communion. All are obliged, by one way or other to maintaine the ministry : some by weekly contributions in their meeting-houses ; Anabaptists and Quakers pay not vnder that notion, but are rated in towne rates, which also is really for that intent." l

Randolph went and came again. Meantime, in the neighboring domain of New Hampshire a governor less able than Randolph and Andros, but as overbearing and resolute to crush out opposition in State and Church, was illustrating before the observant watch of the Massachusetts colony what they might expect when their turn should come. In the intervals of Randolph's absence from New England, Governor Cranfield supplied fresh fuel for the flame.

" Touching Ecclesiasticall matters," he wrote, " the attempting to settle ye way of y" Church of England I perceive wilbe very grievous to ye people, However Mr Mason asserted y' their Inclinacons were mch yl way. I have observed them to be very dilig* and devout in attending on y* mode of worship w"h they have been brought up in, and hath been so long settled among them and seem to be very tenacious of it, and are very thankfull for His Majsties Gracious Indulgence in those matters." 2

"... Tis my humble opinion, that it will be absolutely necessary to admit no person into any place of Trust, but such as take ye Sacrament and are conformable to the Rites of the Church of England, for others will be so influenced by their Ministers as well obstruct the good Settlement, of this place, and I utterly dispair (as I writt in my former to yor Lordps) of any true duty and obedience paid to his Maj'y untill their Colledge be supprest and their Ministers silenced, for they are not only Enimies to his Majty and Government, but Christ himself, for of all the Inhabitants of this Province, being about ffour Thousand in number, not above Three Hundred Christned by reason of their Parents not being Members of their Church. I have been this 16 Months perswading the Ministers to admitt all to the Sacrament and Baptisme, that were not vitious in their lives, but could not prevaile upon them, therefore with advice of the Councell made this inclosed Order. Notwithstanding they were left in the intire possession of their Churches and only required to administer both Sacraments, according to the Liturgie of ye Church of England, to such as desired them, which they refuse to doe, and will understand Liberty of Conscience given in his Majts Commission, not only to exempt them from giving the Sacrament according to the Book of Comon Prayer but make all the Inhabitants contribute to their Maintenance, although they refuse to give them the Sacrament and Christen their Children, if it be not absolutely enjoyned here, and in other colonies, that both Sacraments be administered to all persons that are duly qualified, according to the form of the Comon Prayer, there will be perpetual dissentions, and a totall decay of the Christian Religion." L

In New Hampshire Cranfield tried to put these principles into practice with no more success than was to be looked for when the Governor chose to strike against the Puritan rock. In December, 1683, he ordered the ministers to admit all persons not scandalous to the sacrament and to baptism, and to use for these sacred offices the English liturgy when desired, under penalty ; and he commanded Rev. Joshua Moodey, of Portsmouth, to read this order from his pulpit. A few days later he sent Moodey notice that he with some of his coadjutors - who, if tradition is to be believed, could scarcely claim to be " not scandalous persons " - " would receive from him the sacrament according to the liturgy of the Church of England the next Sunday." Moodey declined to violate his conscience, and went to prison for it with a stout heart. Nothing is so stimulating to religious convictions as the sight of a worthy martyr; and the latent Puritanism was doubtless quickened in many lukewarm spirits in Boston, when like wildfire the news spread of what had been done, just beyond their jurisdiction, by the overbearing Governor who had been seen in their own streets.

In October, 1683, Randolph brought the threatened quo warranto against the charter, which in October, 1684, was abrogated at last. The liberties of the Puritan State had fallen with those of the ancient boroughs of England before the corrupt decision of courts which were the tools of the Stuart tyranny. And Massachusetts was now a Royal Province, to be ruled by a Governor sent from over seas, - a representative of the King, who must needs have, therefore, a sort of vice-regal court, and must worship after the forms of the Established Church. Still a little further delay ; for Charles II. was summoned to the bar of the King of kings, - in that sudden hour of which John Evelyn has left so impressive an account. Charles died in February, 1685. Just before his death he had shown what his temper towards New England was, by commissioning the brutal Colonel Piercy Kirk to be Governor with unlimited authority. He was to have a council of his own appointment, and all lands granted here were to pay a royal quit-rent. One of the three Boston churches was to be seized for the service of the Church of England, a point on which Randolph's persistency with the Royal Council and the prelates had succeeded. But though James II. confirmed Kirk's appointment, he soon found that he should need him for a tool of oppression in

England.1 In the year's delay which yet intervened, the following record from the Journals of the Privy Council shows what preparations were making there : -

" Novf 1 685 : Ordered, that ... his Mais stationer do forthwith provide and deliver to the Right Rev. Father in God, Henry, Lord Bp. of London, ... six large Bibles in folio, six Common- Prayer Books in folio, six books of the Canons of the Church of England, six of the homilies of the Church, six copies of the xxxix Articles, and six Tables of Marriage, to be sent to New-Eng., and there disposed for the use of his Mais plantation, as the said Bp. of London shall direct." 2

On May 15, 1686, there entered Boston Harbor a vessel "freighted heavily with wo " 3 to " the Bostoneers," as Randolph called them. For this " Rose " frigate brought a commission to Joseph Dudley as president of Massachusetts, Maine, Nova Scotia, and the lands between : she also brought the Rev. Robert Ratcliffe, the first minister of the English Church who had ever come so commissioned to officiate on this soil.

The Puritan diarist,4 who has left an invaluable chronicle of this period, supplies the record of the ensuing ecclesiastical steps, not without ample indication of the course of his own sympathies :

" 1686. Tuesday, May 18. A great Wedding from Milton, and are married by Mr. Randolph's Chaplain at Mr. Shrimpton's, according to yf Service-Book, a little after Noon, when Prayer was had at ye Town House : Was another married at ye same time ; The former was Vosse's son. Borroowd a ring. Tis sd they having asked Mr. Cook and Addington, and yy declining it, went after to ye President and he sent ym to ye Parson."

No sooner had Dudley assumed his office than Mr. Ratcliffe waited on the Council, and Mr. Mason and Randolph proposed that he should have one of the three congregational meeting-houses to preach in. This, however, was denied ; but he was allowed the use of the library room in the his Majesty, nor be wanting to doe all good offices been in the Puritans a momentary hope of relief, for your distracted colony, if, at last, they will 2 Palfrey, New England, iii. 484.

The Rise Of Dissenting Faiths. 2Oi

east end of the town-house, which stood where the Old State House now stands, " untill those who desire his Ministry shall provide a fitter place."

" Sabbath, May 3oth, 1686. My son reads to me in course ye 26th of Isaiah, - In that day shall y° Song, &c. And we sing ye 141 Psalm both exceedingly suited to ye day wherein therein to be Worship according to ye Chh of Engld as 'tis call'd, in ye Town- House by Countenance of Authority. Tis defer'd till y° 6th of June at what time y6 Pulpit is provided ; it seems many crowded thether, and ye Ministers preached forenoon and Afternoon. Charles Lidget there. The pulpit is movable, carried up and down stairs, as occasion serves." l

There for the first time the liturgy was read, - and on June 15, 1686, " the Church of England as by law established " was organized in Boston, - as appears from the first record in the parchment-bound folio constituting the earliest record-book of King's Chapel. Besides Mr. Ratcliffe and Mr. Randolph, there were present Captain Lydgett, Messrs. Luscomb, White, Maccartie, Ravenscroft, Dr. Clerke, Messrs. Turfery and Bankes, and Dr. Bullivant. It was voted to defray the expenses of the church by a weekly collection at evening service. Dr. Benj. Bullivant and Mr. Richard Bankes were elected the first church-wardens. It was also voted humbly to address the King and the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, " to implore their favor to the church, and that all other true sons of the Church of England might join in the same." Also : " Agreed, that Mr. Smith the Joyner do make 12 formes, for the servise of the Church, for each of which he shall be paid 43. 8d., and that the said Mr. Smith be paid 2os. quarterly for placing and removing the Pulpit, formes, table, &c."

Another meeting is recorded on July 4, 1686, at which it was agreed to pay Mr. Ratcliffe £50 per annum beside what the Council might allow him.

" Aug( 21, Mane. Mr. Randolph and Bullivant were here. Mr. Randolph mention'd a Contribution toward building them a Chh, and seem'd to goe away displeas'd bee. I spake not up to it." 8

But Randolph had other designs for them, involving the seizure of one of the Congregational meeting-houses, and the support of the Church of England at the cost of those who hated it. Here, however, his purposes were crossed, and his brief partnership with Dudley speedily gave place to hostility, as the possession of coveted power gave the pliant son of stern old Thomas Dudley the opportunity to displease all parties in serving himself. Randolph wrote to the Lords of Trade and Plantations, July 28, 1686:

" The proceeding of the governor and councill . . . are managed to the incouragement of the independant faction and utter discountenancing both the minister and these gentlemen and others who dare openly profess themselves to be of the Church of England, not making any allowance for our minister, more than we rayse by contribution amongst ourselves."

Randolph had supposed it to be part of the implied contract with Dudley that the Church of England was to be installed in power on his accession. But the following letter gives a vivid picture of his disappointment, as well as of the difficulties with which the new church had to contend : l -

"... As to Mr Dudley, our Presid', he is a N. Conformist minister, and for several years preachd in New Engl! till he became a Magistrate, and so continued for many years ; but, finding his interest to faile among that party, sett vp for a King's man, and, when in London, he made his application to my Lord of London, and was well liked of by some about his late Matie ; where vpon he was appointed for this turn to be president, who, at my arriual, with all outward expressions of duty and loyalty, receiued his Maties Commission, Sweetned with liberty of conscience : and now we believed we had gained the point, supposing the President our own for ye C. of Engd. At the opening his Maties commission, I desired Mr Ratcliffe, our minister, to attend the ceremony and say grace, but was refused. I am not to forgett that in the late Rebellion of Munmouth, not one minister opened his lipps to pray for the King, hoping that the time of their deliverance from monarchy and popery was at hand. Some tyme after ye settlement of ye goum, I moued for a place for the C. of England men to assemble in ; after many delays, at last were gott a small room in ye town house, but our Company increasing beyond the expectation of the goum , we now use ye Exchange, and haue ye Common-prayer and two sermons euery Sunday, and at 7 a clock in ye morning on Wednesdays and frydays the whole service of ye Church ; and some Sundays 7 or 8 persons are in one day Baptis'd, and more would dayly be of our communion had wee but the Company and countenance of the President and Councill ; but instead thereof wee are neglected and can obtain no maintainance from them to support our minister. Butt had wee a gen" gour we should soon haue a larg congregation and also one of the Churches in Boston, as your Grace was pleased to propose when these matters were debated at ye Councill Table.2 I humbly remind your Grace of the money granted formerly for evangelizing the Indians in our Neighborhood. It's great pitty that there should be a considerable stock in this country (but how imployed I know not) by Dr. Palfrey, passim, going over essentially the 550, of the original edition; ii. 291, 292, of the same ground, in History of New England, iii. Prince Society's reprint.

and wee want 7 or 800^ to build vs a Church. Their ministry exclaim against yf Common Prayer, calling it man's invention, and that there is more hopes that vvhoremongers and adulterers will go to heaven than those of ye C. of Eng11. By these wicked doctrines they poison the people, and their ministry carry it as high as ever. . . . Your grace can hardly imagine the small artifices they haue vsed to prevent our meetings on Sundays, and at all other tymes to serue God. They haue libelled my wife and our Minister, and this is done (as credibly beleiued) by ye minister of the frigott,1 yett it 's countenanced by the faction, who haue endeavoured to make a breach in my family, betwixt me and my wife, and haue accomplished another design in setting vp and supporting Capt. Georg, Commander of the ' Rose ' frigott, against me. . . .

" It 's necessary that ye gour licence all their ministers, and that none be called to be a pastor of a Congregation without his approbation. By this method alone the whole Country will easily be regulated, and then they will build vs a church and be willing to allow our ministers an honorable maintenance.

" Wee haue a sober, prudent gent, to be our minister, and well approved ; but, in case of sickness or other casualtyes, if he haue not one soul from Eng.1. to helpe him, our Church is lost. ' Tis therefore necessary That another sober man come ouer to assist, for some tymes 'tis requisite that one of them visit the other Colonyes to baptise and administer the Sacrament ; and in regard we cannot make 40'!' a yeare start by contributions for support of him and his assistant, it would be very gratefull to our church affaires if his Malie would please to grant us his Royall letters, That the three meeting houses in Boston, which seuerally collect 7 or &jQ on a Sunday, do pay to our church warden 205-. a weeke for each meeting house, which will be some encouragement to our ministers, and then they can but raile against ye Service of ye Church. They haue great Stocks, and were they directed to contribute to build us a Church, or part from one of their meeting houses, Such as wee should approue, they would purchase that exemption at a great rate, and then they could but call vs papists and our Minister Baal! Priests." 2

It is evident enough, from the letters of the most resolute enemy that New England had, that the Church was pushed here by Randolph in no small degree as a political engine, rather than for religious and devout ends. The clear-sighted and conscientious Puritans who were opposed to him saw this very plainly. The wonder is not that they opposed the church so championed, but rather that it took root at all under such malign auspices.

The congregation of the Church of England in Boston was now organized and established, and would soon have had a religious home of its own but for a new political event. Within five months, on December 20, 1686, Sir Edmund Andros superseded Dudley and became the first Royal Governor of the Province.

It is beyond the scope of this narrative to give in detail the history of the high-handed ways in which Governor Andros faithfully carried out his master's policy. His proceedings in the State were paralleled by his course in ecclesiastical affairs. On the very day of his landing, the Governor endeavored to make an arrangement with the ministers for the partial use of one

1 The Rev. Mr. Buckly was the chaplain of Tanner MS. xxx f. 97, quoted in Perry's Papers the " Rose " frigate. relating to the History of the Church in Mass.

of the meeting-houses for Church of England worship. The pithy condensed entries in Sewall's Diary give us an invaluable picture of the course of the negotiation and of subsequent events ; and there are few more dramatic incidents in our history than the moment when the English ruler and the Boston clergy confronted each other.

"... it seems speaks to ye Ministers in ye Library abt accomodation as to a Meeting-house, yt might so contrive ye time as one House might serve two Assemblies.

"Tuesday, Decr 21. There is a Meeting at Mr. Allen's of ye Ministers, and four of each Congregation to consider what answer to give ye Govr ; and 'twas agreed yt could not with a good Conscience consent yt our Meeting-House should be made use of for ye Cofnon-prayr worship.

"Decr22. . . . In ye Evening Mr. Mather and Willard thorowly discoursed his Excellency about ye Meeting-Houses in great plainess, shewing they could not consent : This was at his Lodging at Madam Taylor's ; He seems to say will not impose.

"Satterday, Xr 25. Govr goes to ye Town-House to Service Forenoon and afternoon, a Redcoat going on's right hand and Capt. George on ye left. Was not at Lecture on Thorsday. Shops open to-day generally and persons about yr occasions. Some but few Carts at Town with wood thou ye day exceeding fair and pleasant. Read in ye morn ye 46 & 47 of Isa."

So ended what must have been an exciting week in the little Puritan community. But they were thankful that things were no worse. Mr. Sewall doubtless expressed the general mind when, meeting Governor Andros in the street, -

The Puritans knew very well the temper of the men whom they were fighting. The controversy was one which no soft words would heal. It was at bottom nothing less than a deadly strife as to which of two opposing principles should govern Massachusetts. The unanimous mind of those who came here to execute the court policy was expressed by Governor Cranfield, of New Hampshire, who, in a letter dated at Boston, June 19, 1683, wrote to Sir LI. Jenkins, -

"... There can be no greater evill attend his Majtie affairs here, then those pernicious and Rebellious principles which flows from their Collige at Cambridge which they call their Uniuersity, from whence all the Townes both in this and the other Colonys are supplyed with Factious and Seditious Preachers who stirr up the people to a dislike of his Majlitf and his Goum1. and the Religion of the Church of England, terming the Liturgy of our Church a precident of Superstition and picked out of the Popish Dunghill ; so that I am humbly of opinion this Country can never bee well settled or the people become good Subjects, till their Preachers bee reformed and that Colleclge suppressed and the severall Churches supplyed with Learned and Orthodox Ministers from England as all other his Maj"es Dominions in America are.

The Ris-E Of Dissenting Faiths

" The Country growes very populous, and if Longer left ungoverned or in that manner as now they are I feare it may bee of dangerous consequence to his Maj's concerns in this part of the World. ... If the Boston Charter were made void and the Cheif of the Faction called to answer in their owne persons for their misdemenors and their Teachers restrained from Seditious preaching, it would give great encouragement to the Loyall Party, to shew themselves, who haue hetherto beene kept under and greatly oppressed and from all places of proffitt and trust. . . ." l

A school of historical students has sprung up in this country who teach that the Massachusetts policy was a self-seeking and hypocritical one. The fact simply was that the Massachusetts policy was imperious, as it was necessary to be when in collision with imperiousness, and its assertors were in away sagacious, as those must be who have to outwit unprincipled craft; their course was narrow, as a sword must be if it is to have a cutting edge. The Puritan idea tended to make men freemen ; the courtly idea of the court of Charles II. tended to make them slaves. In that interest the courtier party here bent all their efforts to break the Puritan idea to atoms. . On the other hand, the Puritan idea was based on the supposition that this should be a colony of Puritans, - that they could keep out everybody else. And thus when the land filled up with churchmen and loyalists, the injustice followed that there was a multitude of disfranchised persons ; so that it came to pass that the courtier party, from having fought against liberty at home, were obliged to fight for liberty here. To our forefathers it seemed that these men were wholly evil ; but as dispassionate historical students we should judge them more fairly.

Confronting the new power that was bent on subverting the cherished system of the Colony was a little company, resolute, uncompromising, devoted to the Puritan idea, - in the five ministers of Boston. They were the steel point of the spear which Massachusetts held steadily before her breast, ever on the guard, though not thrusting against her enemy as yet. The clergy had possessed a supreme influence from the beginning of the colony. The ablest men had found in that profession their largest opportunity. Many a man whose ambition led him later into public life set his foot first on that firm stepping-stone to power. George Downing, who passed from his Cambridge study of theology, by way of a chaplaincy in Cromwell's army, to success as one of the ablest politicians in England, whose baseness in betraying his former friends to a traitor's death when he joined Charles II. was only paralleled by his refusal to allow his mother the pittance needed in her old age ; Joseph Dudley, nursed in the very bosom of Massachusetts, and turning to give her the deadlier sting with talents and powers which made him one of the ablest men of his time; William Stoughton, the rich, sour old bachelor, who never repented of his dark part as judge in the Salem witchcraft tragedy, and whose character

The sceptre of dominion was to pass forever from the Massachusetts clergy with the generation now on the stage. But the five ministers of the Boston churches are worthy to wield it. They face Andros, when he demands one of their churches, with a will as resolute as his own. Four. of them were now hard upon fifty years old ; the fifth made up for the brevity of his twenty-four years by a precocity which was the wonder of the town. Two were joint-ministers of the First Church, two of the Second, and one of the Third, or South, Church.

Rev. James Allen, an ejected minister and Oxford Fellow, came to New England soon after the accession of Charles II. At the period of our narrative he had been eighteen years a minister of the First Church, having been installed as its teacher Dec. 9, 1668, at the same time that Davenport was inducted as its pastor. He was destined to continue in his sacred .office until his death, at the age of seventy-eight, Sept. 22, 1710. John Dunton, in1 his Life and Errors, says: " I went to visit the Reverend Mr. Allen. He is very humble and very rich, and can be generous enough when the humor is upon him. His son was an eminent minister here in England, and deceased at Northampton."

" He was equally moderate and lenient in his concessions to others, on the score of individual freedom, as he was strenuous for the enjoyment of his own rights. He

*^ the civil ruler. [He] enjoyed a long, virtuous, and happy life of seventy-eight years, forty-six of which he had been a member, and forty-two a vigilant ruler and instructer of the Church. His wealth gave him the power, which he used as a good Bishop, to be hospitable."

His colleague, Joshua Moodey, was a man of the stuff" that martyrs are made of, and had himself shown a willingness to die, if need be, in this very cause. During his imprisonment by Cranfield at Portsmouth, he wrote from prison a letter worthy to be enrolled with the Acts of the Martyrs:

" The good Lord prepare poor New England for the bitter cup which is begun with us, and intended (by man at least) to go round. But God is faithful ; upon whose grace and strength I beg grace to hang and hope." This letter he signed " Christ'^ prisoner and your humble servant." '

After three months' incarceration he had come to Boston, and had been invited to remain as Mr. Allen's assistant. It is not less to his honor that in 1692 his opposition to the witchcraft delusion was to cause his removal again from Boston, returning to Portsmouth, where he died July 4, 1697.

The renowned ministers of the Second Church - the Mathers, father and son - are considered in a later chapter of this work. The son, indeed, has given a fantastic tinge to the name, which clouds over his real claim to honorable memory. Cotton Mather had grave faults, - his conceit of learning, his credulity, his monstrous part in the witchcraft tragedy. But lovers of books ought to judge leniently of the man who wrote more than three hundred ! And the part which he played in his later years in the introduction here of inoculation for small-pox, when the fury of the mob imperilled his very life, entitles him to grateful remembrance. When he stood before Andros, only twenty- four years old, his faults were not yet so evident, and his promise seemed to have no limit.

Of the father, Increase Mather, President of Harvard College, - and one of the most eminent who have ever filled that office, - a powerful preacher to the age of eighty-five, agent of Massachusetts at the court of King James II. and at that of William and Mary, his distinguished reception there testifies to the impression which he made on nobles and princes. He lived to be the last possessor of the almost absolute power of the old Puritan clergy. When he faced Andros he was the very incarnation of the Puritan temper. He addressed a town-meeting in Boston when there was question of giving up the charter, in 1683-84, and openly counselled that they should return Naboth's answer when Ahab asked for his vineyard, - that they would not give up the inheritance of their fathers.1

Randolph, who knew men thoroughly, paid Increase Mather the compliment of hating him and fearing him as he did no other man here. " The Bellowes of Sedition and Treason,"2 he called him ; and when after the dowafall of the Andros tyranny he was safely lodged in prison and had leisure to contemplate the bringing to nought of his fifteen years of busy scheming, he wrote from the " Goal in Boston, May 16, '89," to the Govr of Barbados, "... They have not yet sent to England, expecting Mather, their Mahomett." 3

The Mathers also were quite capable of a hatred which they perhaps thought to be only righteous indignation. Increase Mather, with all his dignity, observed this in his famous letter to Governor Dudley, nearly twenty years later than this time, - in which he raked together all Dudley's political and personal sins in a pile of red-hot coals, by no means of the kind which the apostle commands to heap on an enemy's head. It is not difficult to imagine what was the temper of such men as these, when they saw that the veriest stranger would read inscriptions re- father, Increase Mather, the leader of Massacordmg where the house stood in which Cotton chusetts Puritans in this great contest. Mather inoculated his own child to prove the 2 Mather Papers, p. 525.

Last of the five ministers was he of the South Church, - Rev. Samuel Willard, son of Major Simon Willard, one of the principal citizens of Concord and prominent in civil and 'military life. He had been a Fellow of Harvard College and subsequently the first minister of Groton, where his ministry was ended by the destruction of the town by the Indians in March, 1676, when he had removed to Boston and, being settled as colleague to Rev. Thomas Thacher, was soon left the only minister of the South Church, which place he occupied until Rev. Ebenezer Pemberton was settled as his colleague in 1700. From Sept. 6, 1701, to Aug. 14, 1707, he filled the office of Vice-president of Harvard College, while retaining his pastorship. He died Sept. 12, 1707.

" Well furnished with learning," says Dunton, he " has a natural fluency of speech and can say what he pleases." 1 During the witchcraft delusion he bore himself prudently and firmly. Pastor of three of the special judges of that tribunal, " he has as yet," says a contemporary, " met with little but unkindness, abuse, and reproach from many men." Calef says that once " one of the accusers cried out publicly of Mr. Willard, as afflicting of her." He published many works, of which the chief was his Complete Body of Divinity, the first folio volume of theology published in this country, in I726.2

1 Dunton's Letters, edited by Mr. Whitmore, one of your publick Meeting-Houses or in any p. 175. other convenient place, where all who are de-

2 [The portrait of Willard, given in this sirous to come may have liberty, and let the volume, is a reduced heliotype from the engrav- time be as soon as may, as either to day in ing which stands as a frontispiece to this folio, the Afternoon, or to morrow in the Fore-noon ; There is a portrait in Memorial Hall, Cam- but rather then fail, if ye will give me any asbridge. - ED.] surance to have a meeting with you, I will attend

8 The lofty bearing which these Puritan your leasure for two or three days to come, proministers could assume is shown in their an- viding once this day ye send me your positive swer to the Quaker, George Keith, just after answer; and if ye give me a meeting with you, this time. Keith's book was called The Presby- I proffer in true love and good-will, by the terian and Independent Visible Churches in fleto divine assistance, to show and inform you. that (Englanfc And else-wkere, Brought to the Tat, &c. ye teach and preach unto the People many false Philadelphia, 1689. and unsound Principles contrary to the Doc- It contained the following letter: - trine of Christ, sufficiently declared in the holy