The Erection of A Bible Commonwealth
The government of the colony was never a democracy in the modern sense of
the term. At first in 1630, control was assumed by the governor and his
assistants, leaving but little power in the hands of the freeman; but such
usurpation of power could not last, and in 1632 the freemen were given the
right to elect officials, to make and enforce laws, raise money, impose
taxes, and dispose of lands. Thus was begun the transformation of the
court of the company into a parliament, and the company itself into a
commonwealth. So self-sufficient did the colony become in these early
years of its history that by 1646 Massachusetts could assert that it owed
only allegiance to England and was entirely independent of the British
Parliament in all matters of government, in which affairs under its
charter it had absolute power. Many denied this contention of the leaders,
asserting that the company was only a corporation and that any colonist
had a right of appeal to England. Winthrop refused definitely to recognize
this right, and measures were taken to purge the colony of these
refractory spirits, among whom were Dr. Robert Child, one of the best
educated men of the colony, William Vassall, and Samuel Maverick. All were
fined, some clapped in irons, and many banished. Child returned to
England, Vassall went to Barbados, and the rest were silenced. So menacing
was the revolt that Edward Winslow was sent to England to present the case
to the parliamentary commissioners, which he did successfully.
But among those who upheld the freedom of the colony from English
interference and control there were many who complained of the form the
government was taking. The franchise was limited to church members, which
debarred five-sixths of the population from voting and holding office; the
magistrates insisted on exercising a negative vote upon the proceedings of
the deputies, because they deemed it necessary to prevent the colony from
degenerating into "a mere democracy"; and the ministers or elders
exercised an influence in purely civil matters that rendered them arbiters
in all disputes between the magistrates and the deputies. Until 1634, the
general court had been a primary assembly, but in that year representation
was introduced and the towns sent deputies, who soon began to complain of
the meagerness of their powers. From this time on, the efforts of the
deputies to reduce the authority of the magistrates and to increase their
own were continuous and insistent. One bold dissenter was barred from
public office in 1635 for daring to deny the magistrates' claim, and
others expressed their fear that autocratic rule and a governor for life
would endanger the liberty of the people. The dominance of the clergy
tended to the maintenance of an intolerant theocracy and was offensive to
many in Massachusetts who, having fled from Laud's intolerance at home,
had no desire to submit to an equal intolerance in New England. Between
1634 and 1638 the manifestations of this dislike became conspicuous and
alarming. The Governor's son, the younger John Winthrop, dissatisfied with
the hard régime in Massachusetts, returned to England in 1634. Henry Vane,
though elected Governor in 1636, showed marked discontent, and when
defeated the next year left the colony. The English aristocratic Puritans,
Saye and Sele, Brooke, and others, who planned to leave England in 1635,
found themselves so out of accord with the Massachusetts policy of
limiting of the suffrage to church members — and to church membership as
determined by the clergy —that they refused to go to Boston, and persisted
in their plan for a settlement at Saybrook. The Massachusetts system had
thus become not a constitutional government fashioned after the best
liberal thought in England of that day, but a narrow oligarchy in which
the political order was determined according to a rigid interpretation of
theology. This excessive theocratic concentration of power resulted in
driving from the colony many of its best men.
More notorious even than
the political dissensions were the moral and theological disputes which
almost disrupted the colony. The magistrates and elders did not compel men
to leave the colony because of political heresy, but they did drive them
out because of difference in matters of theology. Even before the company
came over, Endecott had sent John and Samuel Browne back to England
because they worshiped according to the Book of Common Prayer. Morton and
six others were banished in 1630 as an immoral influence. Sir Christopher
Gardiner, Philip Ratcliffe, Richard Wright, the Walfords, and Henry Lynn
were all forced to leave in 1630 and 1631 as "unmeete to inhabit here."
Roger Williams, the tolerationist and upholder of soul-liberty, who
complained of the magistrates for oppression and of the elders for
injustice and who opposed the close union of church and state, was
compelled to leave during the winter of 1635 and 1636. But the great
expulsion came in 1637, when an epidemic of heresy struck the colony. A
synod at Newtown condemned eighty erroneous opinions, and the general
court then disarmed or banished all who persisted in error.
A furor of excitement gathered about Anne Hutchinson, who claimed to
be moved by the spirit and denied that an outward conformity to the letter
of the covenant was a sufficient test of true religion unless accompanied
with a change in the inner life. She was a nonconformist among those who,
refusing to conform to the Church of England, had now themselves become
conformists of the strictest type. To Mrs. Hutchinson the "vexatious
legalism of Puritanism" was as abhorrent as had been the practices of the
Roman and Anglican churches to the Puritans, and, though the latter did
not realize it, they were as unjust to her as Laud had been to them. She
broke from a covenant of works in favor of a covenant of grace and in so
doing defied the standing authorities and the ruling clergy of the colony.
Her wit, undeniable power of exhortation, philanthropic disposition, and
personal attributes which gave her an ascendancy in the Boston church,
drew to her a large following and placed the supremacy of the orthodox
party in peril. After a long and wordy struggle to check the
"misgovernment of a woman's tongue" and to rebuke "the impudent boldness
of a proud dame," Mrs. Hutchinson was excommunicated and banished; and
certain of those who upheld her — Wheelwright, Coggeshall, Aspinwall,
Coddington, and Underhill, all leading men of the colony — were also
forced to leave. In Boston and the adjoining towns dozens of men were
disarmed for fear of a general uprising against the orthodox government.
This discord put a terrible strain on the colony, and one marvels
that it weathered the storm. Only an iron discipline that knew neither
charity nor tolerance could have successfully resisted the attacks on the
standing order. The years from 1635 to 1638 were a critical time in the
history of the colony, and the unyielding attitude of magistrates and
elders was due in no small part to the danger of attack from England.
Determined, on the one hand, to save the colony from the menace of
Anglican control, and, on the other, to prevent the admission of liberal
and democratic ideas, they struggled to maintain the rule of a minority in
behalf of a precise and logically defined theocratic system that admitted
neither experiment nor compromise. For the moment they were successful,
because the Cromwellian victory in England was favorable to their cause.
But should independence be overthrown at home, should religion cease to be
a deciding factor in political quarrels, and should the monarchy and the
Established Church gain ascendancy once more, then Massachusetts would
certainly reap the whirlwind. The harvesting might be long but the
garnering would be none the less sure.
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