CHAPTER IX

THE FOUNDING OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY

God hath sifted a nation, that he might send choice grain into this wilderness. WILLIAM STOUGHTON, Election Sermon IN 1690.

73. SOME Commercial beginnings of colonization in New England have been mentioned (§ 58). One such enterprise became the foundation for the Puritan Colony of Massachusetts. A partnership of merchants in the west of England, mainly about Dorchester, had been engaged in the New England fisheries for several years. In 1623, in order to carry on the business better, they established some. forty employees in a station at Cape Ann, under Roger Conant1 as overseer. During the next three years the Dorchester partnership was overwhelmed by heavy losses, and in 1626 it broke up, after sending a vessel to bring home the colonists. But John White,2 one of the partners, by earnest promises of supplies, induced Conant and four others to stay in America, and the next year he succeeded in organizing a strong company of Dorchester and London merchants to renew the work of trade and colonization.

74. This new company came to be known as The Company for Massachusetts Bay. In the spring of 1628 it bought from the New England Council the territory between the Charles and the Merrimac rivers (extending west to the Pacific), and during the summer it sent out sixty settlers under John Endi

1 Conant drifted to Cape Ann from Plymouth, which he left, he said, out of dislike for the extreme principles of the Separatists. How he came to Plymouth we do not know. Possibly he was one of the gentlemen in the Gorges expedition.

2 White's "Brief Relation" (Source Book, No. 58) is the authority for most of the early history of this colony.

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cott, a well-known Puritan gentleman. Conant, meanwhile, had removed from the exposed position at Cape Ann to a more convenient location near by. His "old settlers" at first were inclined to dispute Endicott's authority, but finally they recognized him peaceably as head of the settlement - to which accordingly he gave the Hebrew name Salem (Peace).

75. A year later (March 14, 1629) the Massachusetts Company secured a charter from King Charles. At the time this "First Charter of Massachusetts Bay" (as it came to be called later) was merely a grant to the commercial proprietary company in England. It confirmed their title to the land they had bought from the New England Council, and it gave them jurisdiction over settlers, similar to the authority possessed by other colonizing companies in England, though more restricted.1 The Company now appointed Endicott governor 2 at Salem, collected supplies of all sorts diligently, and sought out desirable emigrants of various trades. In May of 1629 it sent out its second expedition, of some 200 settlers, led by Francis Higginson, a Puritan minister. Soon after, a Puritan church was organized in Salem.

76. So far the history of the colony is like that of other commercial plantations. Most of the settlers were "servants," and rather a worthless lot (§ 80). The chief men were Puritans because it was easier just then for an emigration in England to find fit leaders among the Puritans than among other classes; and the proprietary Company was Puritan, on the whole, because almost the whole merchant class in England was Puritan. But there is no evidence that any one was planning, as yet, to build a Puritan colony. Later in this same

1 Source Book, Nos. 53-55. This charter did not authorize capital punishment, martial law, control over immigration, or coinage of money, though all these powers were exercised under it.

2 Ib., No. 63. Until the Company secured the charter, it had no power to appoint officers in America. Endicott had been its "agent," without legal control over settlers except over those who were "servants" of the Company. 8 Ib., No. 56, for the "agreement" with Higginson.

summer of 1629, however, a new colonizing movement began, with that special purpose.

77. This new movement was due to a new danger to Puritanism in England. For years, despite the strenuous efforts of the Puritans, the English Church had been carried farther and farther away from their ideals. Bishop Laud, the tireless leader of the High-church movement, was ardently supported by King Charles. All high ecclesiastical offices had been turned over to Laud's followers; and his "High Commission" Court, with dungeon and pillory, was now ready to drive Puritan pastors from their parishes.

The Puritans had rested their hope upon parliament. They made the great majority in the House of Commons; and with the meeting of the third parliament of Charles (1628), their reform seemed on the verge of success. That parliament extorted the King's assent to the great "Petition of Right";1 and then, in the winter of 1629, it began vigorously to regulate the church. But the King struck a despotic blow. March 2, he dissolved parliament, sent its leaders to the Tower, and entered upon a system of absolute rule. For eleven years no parliament was to meet in England. Religious reform and political liberty had gone down in common ruin, the end of which no man then could see.

The continent of Europe offered no hope. Every form of Protestantism there seemed doomed. Wallenstein's victorious troopers were turning the Protestant provinces of Germany into wilderness homes for wild beasts; and in France the great Richelieu had just crushed the Huguenots.

Accordingly, the more dauntless of the English Puritans turned their eyes to the New World. And there they saw a marvelous opportunity. At Plymouth was the colony of the Separatists, not large, but safely past the stage of experiment; while close by was the prosperous beginning of a commercial

1 The course of the Puritan struggle in England is told compactly in the Modern Progress, 186-197. Brief explanation of the events referred to in Germany and France can be found in the same text, 174-176.

$ 79] THE DANGER TO ENGLISH PURITANISM

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colony controlled by a Puritan company in England and managed on the spot by well-known Puritans like Endicott and Higginson. How natural to try to convert this Massachusetts into a refuge for Low-church Puritanism, such as Plymouth already was for "Puritans of the Separation."

78. But the leaders of this new movement had no idea of becoming part of a mere plantation governed by a distant proprietary company, however friendly. They were of the ruling aristocracy of England, — justices of their counties, and, on occasion, members of parliament. And so a number of them gathered, by long horseback journeys, and signed the famous Cambridge Agreement (August 25), promising one another solemnly that they would embark for Massachusetts with their families and fortunes, if they could find a way to take with them the charter and the "whole government.”

1

79. A proposal to transfer the government of the Company to America had been made a month before at the July meeting of the Company in London. The plan was novel to most of the members; but in September, after repeated debates, it was approved.2 Commercial motives faded beside the supreme desire to provide a safe refuge for Puritan principles.

The new men of the Cambridge Agreement now bought stock; many old stockholders drew out; the old officers resigned (since they did not wish to emigrate); and John Winthrop, the most prominent of the new men, was elected "governor (October, 1629). The next spring, Winthrop led to Massachusetts a great Puritan migration, the most remarkable colonizing expedition that the world had ever seen.

Previously the governor had been Matthew Cradock, and his term would not have expired regularly until the next May. This position torresponded to that of "treasurer" in the London Company. It must not be confounded with the subordinate "governorship " held by Endicott, any more than Sandys' position as head of the London Company in 1619

1 Source Book, Nos. 58 b and 59.

2 For a detailed discussion on the transfer of the charter, cf. Source Book, No. 53, and comments at close.

is to be confounded with the position of Yeardley in Virginia. Winthrop was the second governor of the Company. When he came to America, he superseded Endicott (for whose separate office there was no

further need), and became governor of the colony also. The two offices merged.

For the first time a proprietary corporation removed to its colony. Colony and corporation merged. Massachusetts became a corporate colony and a Puritan commonwealth.

80. In May, 1629, Endicott had a hundred settlers at Salem. In June, when Higginson arrived with two hundred more (§ 75), another plantation was begun at Charlestown.1 Now, in the summer of 1630, seventeen ships thousand brought two settlers to Massachusetts, and six new towns 2 were started.

But the immigrants found conditions sadly different from their expectations. Two hundred returned home in the ships. that brought them, or sought better prospects in other colonies; and two hundred more died before December. Immediately

1 The next winter slew nearly a third of the colonists; and in June of 1630 Winthrop found the survivors starving and demoralized. Four fifths of them were servants of the Company; but they had accomplished nothing, and Winthrop thought it cheaper to free them than to feed them. There were also seven other little settlements along the coast like that of Blackstone at Boston - with a total population of some fifty souls. These scattered plantations were the remnants of the commercial attempts mentioned in § 58.

2 Boston, Dorchester, Watertown, Roxbury, and minor settlements at Lynn (Saugus) and Newtown (afterward Cambridge). There were also the two older towns, Salem and Charlestown. See map, p. 107.