ughty.

>mas rton.

mittee he is proved to be of very loose morals, and is discarded. He did not return to Plymouth, but went to Virginia and there "died miserably." His pamphlet, "Plaine Dealing," published in London, 1641,1 represents that he was persecuted at Plymouth as an Episcopalian, but the pamphlet abounds in so much malicious abuse of the people at Plymouth and the Bay, that the statement is not worthy of credence. He tells of a Mr. Doughty, a minister, who, in the gathering of a Church at Taunton, insisted that all children of baptized persons, according to the covenant of Abraham, were the children of Abraham, and so ought to be baptized. This was held to be a disturbance on his part, and the minister spoke to the magistrates to order him to be silent, "and the constable dragged him out;" and he and his family left the town. It does not appear, however, that the treatment of Doughty was due to any religious intolerance. It is quite possible, to-day, for disturbers of religious meetings to draw upon themselves the adverse action of the magistrate; and it is not at all unlikely that Doughty suffered, not as a religionist, but as a brawler.

Nor can we put much confidence in Thomas Morton's account of Lyford's afflictions. In his "New English Canaan" he says that Lyford's banishment was due to his refusal to submit to the "brethren at Plymouth, who would have him renounce his former episcopal ordination, and receive a new calling from them, after their fantastical invention." Morton's pamphlet is a conscious travesty, full of ridicule of the colonists, and with many flashes of very amusing wit.2

Morton, indeed, had his own score to settle with both Plymouth and Massachusetts. He came over in 1622, as an agent for Gorges, and established himself at Merry Mountin the present town of Quincy and there led so easy and hilarious a life that he excited the pious horror of the Plymouth men. Bradford describes him as "setting up a schoole

1 Force, Historical Tracts.

2 Ibid., II, 30; Barry, History of Massachusetts, I, 131; Massachusetts Historical Collections, III, 3; 80, 96.

of atheisme," as given to drink and "Maypole follies." He does not seem to have been disturbed, however, by the colonists, until he began teaching to the Indians the use of gunpowder and furnishing them with both guns and rum. This intensified the Plymouth horror into alarm, and in 1628 brought Myles Standish to Merry Mount to abate a dangerous nuisance. The settlement was broken up, and Morton was sent to England, only to return again in another year and presently draw down upon himself the repressive hand of the Bay authorities.1

It is unjust to credit the actions against Lyford and Morton to the spirit of religious intolerance. Of such spirit we look in vain through the early records of Plymouth for distinctly severe tokens, save in the exclusion of Romanists and Jesuits from the jurisdiction. How largely this freedom from intolerance was due to the comparative isolation of Plymouth we cannot say; nor can we declare what the action of that colony might have been, had it been tried by so frequent and incisive dissent as disturbed the peace of Massachusetts. For the most part such disturbing elements did not go to Plymouth, where the peace and contentment, natural to so religious and so notably homogeneous a society, gave small occasion for any restrictive action.

Doubtless the colony owed much of this peace to the wise influence of Bradford. Succeeding as governor to John Carver, Bradford who fell a victim to the severities of the first winter, and reëlected year after year, he guided the fortunes of Plymouth with a discretion, moderation, and firmness, which reveal him as a man well qualified both in mind and character to be the leader of his fellows. He was a man to be trusted, followed, and loved. His Letter-Book and Narrative abound in illustrations of his wise vigor, and of a religious spirit which was simple as a child's. Occasionally he "drops into poetry," as witness the following from his "Poetical Account of New England":

1 Fiske, Beginnings of New England, p. 91.

Men thought it happy and a blessed time
To see how sweetly all things did agree:
Both in Church and State there was an amity;
Each to the other mutual help did lend;
And to God's honor all their ways did tend;
In love and peace His truth for to retain,

And God's service how best for to maintain.”
991

Happy was that lot of Plymouth, which, while permitting to them opportunity "to maintain God's service" in the way most fitting to their mind and conscience, exposed them to so infrequent contact with differing views. By reason of such lot the historical incidents illustrative of our present theme are few in number. In Plymouth abode a spirit of broad tolerance, if not a legally defined religious liberty. It was again her good fortune that, when the king in 1691 merged the colony with Massachusetts, the union did not take place until the Bay theocracy had become little more than a name and memory.

II. The Massachusetts Theocracy

Of quite different complexion was the early history of Massachusetts. While in Plymouth peace abounded, in the colony on the Bay discord did "much more abound." Hardly had the colonists housed themselves and taken the first steps toward settling their modes of life and government, when the voice of religious dissension made itself heard, to be repressed by a severely persecuting hand and, in one instance, in the midst of a controversy which shook the very foundations of the commonwealth.

The history of the Bay settlement begins with the arrival of Endicott and his company in 1628. There were a few 1 Massachusetts Historical Collections, I, 3; 77.

scattered settlers before his coming: Thomas Walford at Charlestown, William Blackstone at Shawmut, Samuel Maverick on Noddle Island, and Morton's companions at Merry Mount. These were all Churchmen and looked upon the new comers with small degree of favor. Blackstone was a minister and a recluse, desirous of a solitary life and somewhat of a dissenter. After the first settlement of affairs at the Bay, with the Congregational Church establishment and Shawmut occupied and renamed Boston, Blackstone felt himself crowded out. He retired from the scene, complaining that he left England because he "did not like the Lord Bishops," and now he could not join with the colonists because he "would not be under the Lord Brethren." These men, on Endicott's arrival, showed considerable unwillingness to allow his settlement or to submit to his authority. But they were helpless and were persuaded to peace, from which conclusion Endicott gave the name of "Salem" to the place Salem. chosen for this advance guard of the new colony.

Like the Plymouth Pilgrims, Endicott and his company •came in advance of a charter. They were hastened in their departure by the company in England, which had already made application for a charter, in order to anticipate the schemes of Gorges. The charter was granted by Charles I. Charter. in the following year, and conferred upon the "Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay in New England" a power of self-government, which the colony was not slow to use in maintaining a practical independence. In this charter, differing from all charters given to colonies out of New England, save that to Pennsylvania, there was nothing said about ecclesiastical affairs. It was not stated that churches should be founded "according to the laws of our kingdom of England." Nor was there anything said about religious liberty, and "for a twofold reason: the crown would not have granted it, and it was not what the grantees wanted. They preferred to keep in their own hands the question as to how much, or how little, religious liberty they should claim or

1 ligious itude.

1

allow." The charter did, indeed, contain a clause authorizing the colonial magistrate to administer the oath of supremacy "to all persons who should pass into their plantation.' But this was not required, being left to their discretion. It was also prescribed that the "Lawes and Ordinances (of the colony) be not contrarie or repugnant to the Lawes and Statutes of this our Realme of England.” 2

It is evident that the Puritans of Massachusetts were jealous for their own freedom. They did not want the Church of England forced on them by the king, nor did they want religious liberty for any others than themselves. Whether this latter exclusiveness already lay in their mind when the charter was sought it is impossible to say, but, at once that their ecclesiastical regulations were formed, they appeared as sternly repressive of dissent as were the authorities of the English Church.

Their attitude toward the Church of England, as illustrated by the ecclesiastical polity immediately established at the Bay, marks a strange and almost unreasonable change of mind. Up to the time of the settlement in Massachusetts the distinction between the Puritans and those who were afterward called Pilgrims was sharply drawn. The latter were Separatists whose conscience led them to withdraw from the national Church, in protest against her oppression

1 Fiske, Beginnings of New England, p. 96.

2 Anderson, in the History of the Colonial Church (II, 310), accuses the Puritans of bad faith and disloyalty for not conforming their Church to these terms of the charter. But this overstrains their intent, as comparison with various other charters shows. In them the royal desire to establish the Church of England in the colonies is expressed in specific language to that effect, and not left to any general inference from the laws obtaining in England. For this reason, as well as from the failure to make the oath of supremacy mandatory in the new plantation, the colonists were entirely justified in holding that the reference to the laws and statutes of England had in view only the civil regulations which the colonists might enact. This certainly was the opinion of Charles II., when, fifty years later, he wrote, "The principle and foundation of the charter of Massachusetts was the freedom of liberty of conscience." (Bancroft, I, 343.)