1623.

The energetic Sir Ferdinando Gorges, in connection with an able partner named Mason, had obtained a grant of territory from Naumkeag, now Salem, to the Kennebec, and thence to Canada. This grant was named Laconia. Portsmouth and Dover, in New Hampshire, were now founded; but the "Company of Laconia" did not prosper, and these towns long remained mere fishing stations. Robert Gorges, son of Sir Ferdinando, obtained at this time a grant of ten miles on the northern shore of Massachusetts Bay; he was also appointed lieutenant-general of New England, Francis West being the admiral sent out to prohibit disorderly trading within the limits of the patent held by the Council for New England. Gorges brought with him a clergyman of the Church of England, named Morrell, who was appointed, by the archbishop of Canterbury, commissary of ecclesiastical affairs. His mission was looked on with no favor by the stern Puritans, and in the course of a year or so he returned to England without having attempted any interference with the colonists or their religious views and practices. The following year, another

1624.

clergyman, by name Lyford, was recommended by the partners in London, to supply the pastoral office vacant at New Plymouth: he was as little acceptable as Morrell, and soon after, under charge of practising against the colony, he and a few adherents were expelled. Migrating to Nantasket, at the entrance of Boston harbor,

The colony of New Plymouth, though still feeble, gave encouraging signs of life and energy, for though there were no luxuries as yet to be met with, there was wholesome food and a good supply of pure water to drink. "The nonexistence of private property, the discontent and unwillingness to labor thence arising, and the exorbitant interest, as high as forty-five per cent. paid for money borrowed in London, were, however, serious drawbacks to the prosperity of the colony. It was found necessary, indeed, to enter into an agreement that each family should plant for itself; and an acre of land was accordingly assigned to each person in fee. Under this stimulus, the production of corn soon became so great, that, from buyers, the colonists became sellers to the Indians. At the end of the fourth year after its settlement, Plymouth had thirty-two dwelling houses, and a hundred and eightyfour inhabitants. The general stock, or whole amount of the investment, personal services included, amounted to £7,000, or $34,000. The London partners were very unwilling to make any further advances. John Robinson died in Holland, and several years elapsed before his family, and the rest of the Leyden congregation could find means to transport themselves to New Plymouth. Those already there-passengers by the Mayflower, the Fortune, the Anne, and the Little James-were afterward distinguished as the 'old comers,' or forefathers.' Six or seven years elapsed before the colony received any

เ

CH. VI.

1627.

considerable addition to its numbers." In 1627, at which date the agreement between the Plymouth colonists and the London merchants came to an end, the latter agreed to sell out their interest for $9,000. The joint-stock principle was abandoned, and some twenty acres of land nearest the town, were donated to each colonist.

Although the number of the colonists at New Plymouth in 1630, did not

amount to three hundred, yet 1630. they considered themselves permanently established. "It was not with them as with other men," was their language, "whom small things could discourage, or small discontents cause to wish themselves at home again. By degrees, too, as distance from the mother country favored the assumption of responsibility, they exercised all the prerogatives of government, even to capital punishment. All laws were enacted in a general assembly of the colonists; and in religious matters the same freedom of speech prevailed. Every one who chose, addressed the congregation on Sundays, and for many years they had no settled pastor or minister among them.

The settlement at New Plymouth was soon after followed by another and more extensive one of the Puritans on the shores of Massachusetts Bay. Their position at home was becoming less and less satisfactory, and it was but natural that their minds should turn to America as a place of

Hildreth's "6 History of the United States," vol. i., p. 171.

59

refuge from trial and persecution. A grant was obtained from the New England Company of Plymouth, embracing Massachusetts Bay and the country to the westward. John Endicott, a Puritan of the sternest and severest sort, first established himself at Naumkeag, and soon after, a 1628. strong body, chiefly from Boston, in Lincolnshire, followed. A A patent was obtained, but not without considerable difficulty, from Charles I., incorporating the adventurers as the "Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay in New England," the stockholders to elect annually a governor, deputy-governor, and eighteen assistants, who were to administer the affairs of the colony in monthly court meetings. Four great and general courts of the whole body of freemen were to be held for the transaction of public affairs. Nothing was to be enacted contrary to the rights of Englishmen, but the supreme power resided with the Company in England. It was regarded as a patent for a trading corporation, and no specific provision was made on the subject of religion. A large number of the proprietors were attached to the Church of England; Endicott, however, having visited Plymouth, desired to establish an Independent church, and to renounce the use of the Liturgy; hence he became involved in a dispute with two brothers of the name of Browne-who were among the original patentees, and who desired to have the services of the Church of England fully car- 1629. ried out in the colony-and he shipped them off to England as "fac

tious and evil conditioned." Endicott was reprimanded by the Company for this stretch of authority, but the complaints of the Brownes were unheeded. "This transaction," as Mr. Bartlett remarks, in his "Pilgrim Fathers," "not merely illustrates the character of Endicott, but exposes the secret principle upon which the new commonwealth was founded, the open avowal of which would have certainly prevented the concession of a royal charter. It was, while nominally subject to the authority of the Church of England, to establish a totally different system, in which all that was really vital to that system, such as its Episcopal government and appointed formularies, should be entirely set aside and no toleration granted to any other form of worship but that agreed upon by themselves. The expulsion of the Brownes was only the first of that series of oppressive actions which ended in the judicial murder of the quakers."

A plan to transfer the charter and the Company from England to the colony itself was next formed, which led to a very important increase in the number and distinction of the emigrants. The principal of these were, Sir Richard Saltonstall, Isaac Johnson, (brother-in-law of the Earl of Lincoln,) Thomas Dudley, and John Winthrop. Winthrop was chosen governor, and, by his admirable conduct, fully justified the general confidence. He was indeed a noble specimen of the English gentleman-loyal, yet no less firmly bent upon the assertion of public liberty, and, by old association, attached to the Church, which he nevertheless

desired to see reformed upon what the Puritans deemed the pure basis of Scripture. The emigrants included many persons of high character, wealth, and learning. Their attachment to the mother country was manifested in a protestation against certain calumnious reports which had gone forth against them, wherein they declare their undying attachment, both to the Church that had nursed them in her bosom, and to the land, from which they were now voluntarily expatriating themselves.* The expedition was 1630. by far the most important that had ever left the shores of England for the wilds of America, consisting of fif teen ships conveying about a thousand emigrants, among whom were four

*We quote a striking paragraph from the letter addressed by them to "the rest of their brethren in and

of the Church of England." It was dated from Yar" We mouth, aboard the Arbella, April 7th, 1630.

desire you would be pleased to take notice of the prin

cipals and body of our company, as those who esteem

it our honor to call the Church of England, from

whence we rise, our dear mother; and cannot part

from our native country, where she specially resideth, without much sadness of heart, and many tears in our eyes; ever acknowledging that such hope and part as we have obtained in the common salvation, her breasts. We leave it not, therefore, as loathing blessing God for the parentage and education, as members of the same body, shall always rejoice in her good, and unfeignedly grieve for any sorrow that shall ever betide her; and while we have breath,

we have received in her bosom, and sucked it from

that milk wherewith we were nourished there, but,

sincerely desire and endeavor the continuance and

abundance of her welfare, with the enlargement of

her bounds in the kingdom of Christ Jesus." They also ask, further on in the letter, of their brethren in

England, that they may not be despised nor deserted "in their prayers and affections."-See Hubbard's New England, pp. 126, 7. Consult, also, the famous

Dr. Cotton Mather's "Magnalia," vol. i., pp. 74, 5, for some curious and edifying remarks on this letter

and its purport.

peninsula, however, as was natural, speedily attracted their attention: it was then in a state of nature, and in the undisturbed possession of the solitary occupant, by name Blackstone. Here Winthrop and his people determined to fix themselves, and begin a settlement, which, after the English town in Lincolnshire, they called BosOther parties of emigrants, as they arrived, settled at various points in the vicinity of Boston, and gave names to the various towns and villages which they then and there founded.

TON.

"Each settlement," says Mr. Hildreth, "at once assumed that township authority which has ever formed so marked a feature in the political organization of New England. The people assembled in town meeting, voted taxes for local purposes, and chose three, five, or seven of the principal inhabitants, at first under other names, but early known as 'selectmen,' who had the expenditure of this money, and the executive management of town affairs. A treasurer and a town clerk were also chosen, and a constable was soon added for the service of civil and criminal processes. Each town constituted, in fact, a little republic, almost complete in itself.

The warmth of their attachment to home had led to the expression of strong feeling of affection for their "dear mother," the Church of England; but when they set foot on the soil of the New World, they did not hesitate to arrange and organize churches

Hildreth's "History of the United States," vol. i.,

p. 186.

according to their own views of right and propriety; but, as they were inclined to a temporizing policy, at least for the present, they acted prudently, so as not needlessly to provoke collision on such nice points as the value and necessity of Episcopal ordination, the obligation of ceremonies, and the like.

Although the new settlers were not subjected to hardships so severe as those which had fallen upon the New Plymouth colony, yet owing to various circumstances of an unfavorable cha racter, shortness of provision, debility, severity of the winter, etc., more than two hundred died before December, among them the Lady Arbella Johnson and her husband.*

1630.

*Cotton Mather bestows this somewhat quaint tribute to their character. "Of those who soon dyed

after their first arrival, not the least considerable was the Lady Arbella, who left an earthly paradise in the

family of an Earldom, to encounter the sorrows of a wilderness, for the entertainments of a pure worship in the house of God; and then immediately left that wilderness for the Heavenly paradise, whereto the compassionate Jesus, of whom she was a follower,

called her. We have read concerning a noble woman of Bohemia, who forsook her friends, her plate, her house, and all; and because the gates of the

city were guarded, crept through the common sewer, that she might enjoy the institutions of our Lord at another place where they might be had. The spirit which acted that noble woman, we may suppose,

carried this blessed lady thus to and through the hardships of an American desert. But as for her virtuous husband, Isaac Johnson, Esq., He try'd

To live without her, lik'd it not, and dy'd. His mourning for the death of his honorable consort was too bitter to be extended a year; about a month

after her death, his ensued, unto the extream loss of the whole plantation. But at the end of this perfect and upright man, there was not only peace, but joy;

and his joy particularly expressed itself, that God had

kept his eyes open so long as to see one church of the Lord Jesus Christ gathered in these ends of the earth, before his own going away to Heaven."-Mather's "Magnalia," vol. i., p. 77.