but firm. When a rumor reached them [September 18, 1634] that an arbitrary commission,' and a general governor was appointed for all the English colonies in America, the Massachusetts people, poor as they were, raised three thousand dollars to build fortifications for resistance. Even a quo warranto [April, 1638]' did not affect either their resolution or their condition. Strong in their integrity, they continued to strengthen their new State by fostering education,' the "cheap defense of nations," and by other wise appliances of vigorous efforts. The civil war which speedily involved the church and the throne in disaster, withdrew the attention of the persecutors from the persecuted. The hope of better times at home checked immigration, and thereafter the colony received but small accessions to its population, from the mother country.

The ties of interest and warmest sympathy united the struggling colonists of New England. Natives of the same country, the offspring of persecutionalike exposed to the weapons of hostile Indians and the depredations of the Dutch and French,' and alike menaced with punishment by the parent government-they were as one people. They were now [1643] more than twenty thousand in number, and fifty villages had been planted by them. The civil war in England' threatened a total subversion of the government, and the Puritans began to reflect on the establishment of an independent nation eastward of the Dutch dominions. With this view, a union of the New England colonies was proposed in 1637, at the close of the Pequod war. It was favorably received by all, but the union was not consummated until 1643, when the colonies of Plymouth, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Haven" confederated for mutual welfare. Rhode Island asked for admittance into the Union [1643], but was refused," unless it would acknowledge the authority of Plymouth. Local jurisdiction was jealously reserved by each colony, and the doctrine of State Rights was thus early practically developed. It was a confederacy of independent States like our Union. The general affairs of the confederacy were managed by a board of commissioners, consisting of two church-members from cach colony, who were to meet annually, or oftener if required. Their duty was to consider circumstances, and recommend measures for the general good. They had no executive power. Their propositions were considered and acted upon by the several colonies, each assuming an independent sovereignty. This confed

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1 The Archbishop of Canterbury and associates received full power to establish governments and laws over the American settlements; to regulate religious matters; inflict punishments, and even to revoke charters. Note 3, page 107.

In 1636, the General Court at Boston appropriated two thousand dollars for the establishment of a college. In 1638, Rev. John Harvard bequeathed more than three thousand dollars to the institution which was then located at Cambridge, and it received the name of "Harvard College," now one of the first seminaries of learning in the United States. In 1647, a law was passed, requiring every township, which contained fifty householders, to have a school-house, and employ a teacher; and each town containing one thousand freeholders to have a grammar-school, Note 3, page 108.

The Dutch of New Netherland [page 72], still claimed jurisdiction upon the Connecticut River, and the French settlers in Acadie, castward of New England, were becoming troublesome to the Puritans.

Note 3, page 108.

' Page 117.

7 Page 72. 10 Page 89.

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Page 78. "Page 91.

eracy remained unmolested more than forty years' [1643–1686], during which time the government of England was changed three times.

The colony of Massachusetts Bay was always the leading one of New England, and assumed to be a "perfect republic." After the Union, a legislative change took place. The representatives had hitherto held their sessions in the same room with the governor and council; now they convened in a separate apartment; and the distinct House of Representatives, or democratic branch of the legislature, still existing in our Federal and State Governments, was established in 1644. Unlike Virginia, the colonists of New England sympathized with the English republicans, in their efforts to abolish royalty. Ardently attached to the Parliament, they found in Cromwell, when he assumed supreme authority, a sincere friend and protector of their liberties. No longer annoyed by the frowns and menaces of royalty, the energies of the people were rapidly developed, and profitable commerce was created between

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Massachusetts and the West Indies. This trade brought bullion, or uncoined gold and silver, into the colony; and in 1652, the authorities exercised a prerogative of independent sovereignty, by establishing a mint, and coining silver money,' the first within the territory of the United States. During the same year, settlements in the present State of Maine, imitating the act of those of New Hampshire,' eleven years earlier [1641], came under the jurisdiction of Massachusetts.

FIRST MONEY COINED IN THE UNITED

STATES.

And now an important element of trouble and perplexity was introduced. There arrived in Boston, in July, 1656, two zealous religious women, named Mary Fisher and Ann Austin, who were called Quakers. This was a sect recently evolved from the heaving masses of English society, claiming to be more rigid Puritans than all who had preceded them. Letters unfavorable to the sect had been received in the colony, and the two women were cast into prison, and confined for several weeks. With eight others who arrived during

1 When James the Second came to the throne, the charters of all the colonies were taken away or suspended. When local governments were re-established after the Revolution of 1688, there no longer existed a necessity for the Union, and the confederacy was dissolved.

Page 108.

3 Note 3, page 108.

In October, 1651, the general court or legislature of Massachusetts ordered silver coins of the values of threepence, sixpence, and a shilling sterling, to be made. The mint-master was allowed fifteen pence out of every twenty shillings, for his trouble. He made a large fortune by the business. From the circumstance that the effigy of a pine-tree was stamped on one side, these coins, now very rare, are called pine-tree money. The date [1652] was not altered for thirty years Massachusetts was also the first to issue paper money in the shape of treasury notes. See page 132. Page 80.

The founder of the sect was George Fox, who promulgated his peculiar tenets about 1650. He was a man of education and exalted purity of character, and soon, learned and influential men became his co-workers. They still maintain the highest character for morality and practical Christianity. See note 7, page 94.

Their trunks were searched, and the religious books found in them were burned by the hangman, on Boston Common. Suspected of being witches [note 7, page 132], their persons were examined in order to discover certain marks which would indicate their connection with the Evil One.

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the year, they were sent back to England. Others came, and a special act against the Quakers was put in force [1657], but to no purpose. Opposition increased their zeal, and, as usual with enthusiasts, precisely because they were not wanted, they came. They suffered stripes, imprisonments, and general contempt; and finally, in 1658, on the recommendation of the Federal Commissioners, Massachusetts, by a majority of one vote, banished them, on pain of death. The excuse pleaded in extenuation of this barbarous law was, that the Quakers preached doctrines dangerous to good government. But the death penalty did not deter the exiles from returning; and many others came because they courted the martyr's reward. Some were hanged, others were publicly whipped, and the prisons were soon filled with the persecuted sect. The severity of the law finally caused a strong expression of public sentiment against it. The Quakers were regarded as true martyrs, and the people demanded of the magistrates a cessation of the bloody and barbarous punishments. The death penalty was abolished, in 1661; the fanaticism of the magistrates and the Quakers subsided, and a more Christian spirit of toleration prevailed. No longer sufferers for opinion's sake, the Quakers turned their attention to the Indian tribes, and nobly seconded the efforts of Mahew and Eliot in the propagation of the gospel among the pagans of the forest.

On the restoration of monarchy in 1660, the judges who condemned Charles the First to the block, were outlawed. Two of them (William Goffe and Edward Whalley) fled to America, and were the first to announce at Boston the accession of Charles the Second. Orders were sent to the colonial authorities for their arrest, and officers were dispatched from England for the same purpose. The colonists effectually concealed them, and for this act, and the general sympathy manifested by New England for the republican party, the king resolved to show them no favor. They had been exempt from commercial restrictions during Cromwell's administration; now these were revived, and the stringent provisions of a new Navigation Act' were rigorously enforced. The people vainly petitioned for relief; and finally, commissioners were sent [August, 1644] to hear and determine all complaints that might exist in New England, and take such measures as they might deem expedient for settling the peace and security of the country on a solid foundation.” • This was an unwise

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1 Mary Fisher went all the way from London to Adrianople, to carry a divine message to tho Sultan. She was regarded as insane; and as the Moslems respect such people as special favorites of God, Mary Fisher was unharmed in the Sultan's dominions. Page 121. The Quakers denied all human authority, and regarded the power of magistrates as delegated tyranny. They preached purity of life, charity in its broadest sense, and denied the right of any man to control the opinions of another. Conscience, or "the light within," was considered a sufficient guide, and they deemed it their special mission to denounce "hireling ministers" and "persecuting magistrates," in person. It was this offensive boldness which engendered the violent hatred toward the sect in England and America.

John Eliot has been truly called the Apostle to the Indians. He began his labors soon after his arrival in America, and founded the first church among the savages, at Natic, in 1660, at which time there were ten towns of converted Indians in Massachusetts. Thirty-five years later, it was estimated that there were not less than three thousand adult Christian Indians in the Islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, alone. Note 4, page 109.

These were Colonel Richard Nicolls, Sir Robert Carr, George Cartwright and Richard Maverick. They came with a royal fleet, commanded by Colonel Nicolls, which had been sent to assert English authority over the possessions of the Dutch, in New Netherland. See page 144.

movement on the part of the mother country. The colonists regarded the measure with indignation, not only as a violation of their charters, but as an incipient step toward establishing a system of domination, destructive to their liberties. Massachusetts boldly protested against the exercise of the authority of the commissioners within her limits, but at the same time asserted her loyalty to the sovereign. The commissioners experienced the opposition of the other New England colonies, except Rhode Island. Their acts were generally disregarded, and after producing a great deal of irritation, they were recalled in 1666. The people of Massachusetts, triumphant in their opposition to royal oppression, ever afterward took a front rank in the march toward complete freedom. The licentious king and his ministers were too much in love with voluptuous ease, to trouble themselves with far-off colonies; and while Old England was suffering from bad government, and the puissance of the throne was lessening in the estimation of the nations, the colonies flourished in purity, peace, and strength, until Metacomet, the son of the good Massasoit,' kindled a most disastrous Indian war, known in history as

KING PHILIP'S WAR.

Massasoit kept his treaty with the Plymouth colony faithfully while he lived. Metacomet, or Philip, resumed the covenants of friendship, and kept them inviolate for a dozen years. But as spreading settlements were reducing his domains acre by acre, breaking up his hunting grounds, diminishing his fisheries, and menacing his nation with servitude or annihilation, his patriotism was aroused, and he willingly listened to the hot young warriors of his tribe, who counseled a war of extermination against the English. At Mount Hope' the seat of the chief sachems of the Wampanoags, in the solitudes of the primeval forests, he planned, with consummate skill, an alliance of all the New England tribes, against the European intruders.

KING PHILIP.

At this time, there were four hundred "praying Indians," as the converts to Christianity were called, firmly attached to the white people. One of them, named John Sassamon, who had been educated at Cambridge, and was a sort of secretary to Philip, after becoming acquainted with the plans of the sachem,

1 Page 114.

2 Page 114.

3 Massasoit had two sons, whom Governor Price named Alexander and Philip, in compliment to their bravery as warriors. Alexander died soon after the decease of his father; and Philip became chief sachem of the Wampanoags.

Mount Hope is a conical hill, 300 feet in height, and situated on the west side of Mount Hope Bay, about two miles from Bristol, Rhode Island. It was called Pokanoket by the Indians.

The tribes which became involved in this war numbered, probably, about twenty-five thousand souls. Those along the coast of Massachusetts Bay, who had suffered terribly by a pestilence just before the PILGRIMS came [page 77], had materially increased in numbers; and other tribes, besides the New England Indians proper [page 22], became parties to the conflict.

revealed them to the authorities at Plymouth. For this he was slain by his countrymen, and three Wampanoags were convicted of his murder, on slender testimony, and hanged. The ire of the tribe was fiercely kindled, and the thirsted for vengeance. The cautious Philip was overruled by his fiery young men, and remembering the wrongs and humiliations he had personally received from the English,' he trampled upon solemn treaties, sent his women and children to the Narragansetts for protection, and kindled the flame of war. Messengers were sent to other tribes, to arouse them to co-operation, and with all the power of Indian eloquence, Metacomet exhorted his followers to curse the white men, and swear eternal hostility to the pale faces. He said, in effect:

Although fierce and determined when once aroused, no doubt Philip commenced hostilities contrary to the teachings of his better judgment, for he was sagacious enough to foresee failure. "Frenzy prompted their rising. It was but the storm in which the ancient inhabitants of the land were to vanish away. They rose without hope, and therefore they fought without mercy. To them, as a nation, there was no to-morrow."

The bold Philip struck the first blow at Swanzey, thirty-five miles southwest from Plymouth. The people were just returning from their houses of worship, for it was a day of fasting and humiliation [July 4, 1675], in anticipation of hostilities. Many were slain and captured, and others fled to the surrounding settlements, and aroused the people. The men of Plymouth, joined by those of Boston and vicinity, pressed toward Mount Hope. Philip was besieged in a swamp for many days, but escaped with most of his warriors, and became a fugitive with the Nipmucs,2 an interior tribe of Massachusetts. These espoused his cause, and with full fifteen hundred warriors, he hastened toward the white settlements in the far-off valley of the Connecticut. In the mean while the little army of white people penetrated the country of the Narragansetts, and extorted a treaty of friendship from Canonchet, chief sachem of

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1 In 1671, Philip and his tribe being suspected of secretly plotting the destruction of the English, were deprived of their fire-arms. He never forgot the injury, and long meditated revenge. 2 Page 22. 3 Page 22. Son of Miantonomoh, whose residence was upon a hill a little north of the city of Newport, R. I. That hill still bears the name of Miantonomoh, abbreviated to "Tonomy HL."– Page 91.