1689.]

NEW HAMPSHIRE.

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dominion at their own charges, provided they and their posterity might enjoy certain privileges." Yet Somers resisted the restoration of the charter of Massachusetts, pleading its imperfections. The charter sketched by Sir George Treby was rejected by the privy council for its liberality; and that which, in October, 1691, was finally conceded, reserved such powers to the crown, that Cooke, the popular envoy, declined to accept it. Somers and King William were less liberal to Massachusetts than Clarendon and Charles II.

The charter government of Massachusetts, as established by the revolutionary monarch of England, differed from that of the royal provinces in nothing but the council. In the royal colonies, that body was appointed by the king; in Massachusetts, it was, in the first instance, appointed by the king, and, subject to a negative from the governor, was ever after elected, in joint ballot, by the members of the council and the representatives of the people. As the councillors were twenty-eight in number, they generally, by their own vote, succeeded in effecting their own reëlection; and, instead of being, as elsewhere, a greedy oligarchy, were famed for their unoffending respectability. For long years, they ventured on nothing that could deeply displease royalty or the people.

The territory of Massachusetts was by the charter vastly enlarged. On the south, it embraced Plymouth colony and the Elizabeth Islands; on the east, it included Maine and all beyond it to the Atlantic; on the north, it was described as swept by the St. Lawrence - the fatal gift of a wilderness, for the conquest and defence of which Massachusetts expended more treasure, and lost more of her sons, than all the English continental colonies beside.

From the Elizabeth Islands to the St. Lawrence, and eastward to the Atlantic, Massachusetts now included the whole vast region, except New Hampshire. That colony became henceforward a royal province. In 1689,

VOL. II.

its inhabitants had assembled in convention to institute government for themselves; at their second session, they resolved to unite, and did actually unite, with Massachusetts; and both colonies desired that the union might be permanent. But England, if it annexed to Massachusetts the burden of the unconquered desert east and north of the Piscataqua, held itself bound by no previous compact to concede to New Hampshire any charter whatever. The right to the soil, which Samuel Allen, of London, had purchased of Mason, was recognized as valid; and Allen himself received the royal commission to govern a people whose territory, including the farms they had redeemed from the wilderness, he claimed as his own. His son-in-law Usher, of Boston, formerly an adherent of Andros, and a great speculator in lands, was appointed, under him, lieutenantgovernor. Such was the English revolution of 1688. It valued the uncertain claims of an English merchant more than the liberties of a province. Indeed, that revolution loved, not liberty, but privilege, and respected popular liberty only where it had the sanction of a vested right.

In 1692, the new government for New Hampshire was organized by Usher. The civil history of that colony, for a quarter of a century, is a record of lawsuits about land. Complaints against Usher were met by counter complaints, till New Hampshire was placed, with Massachusetts, under the government of Bellamont, and, in 1699, a judiciary, composed of men attached to the colony, was instituted. Then, and for years afterwards, followed scenes of confusion; - trials in the colonial courts, resulting always in verdicts against the pretended proprietary; appeals to the English monarch in council; papers withheld; records of the court under Cranfield destroyed; orders from the lords of trade and the crown disregarded by a succession of inflexible juries; a compromise proposed, and rendered of no avail by the death of one of the parties; an Indian deed man

1691.]

MASSACHUSETTS.

115

ufactured to protect the cultivators of the soil; till, in 1715, the heirs of the proprietary abandoned their claim in despair. The yeomanry of New Hampshire gained quiet possession of the land which their labor had redeemed and rendered valuable. The waste domain reverted to the crown. A proprietary, sustained by the crown, claimed the people of New Hampshire as his tenants; and they made themselves freeholders.

For Massachusetts, the nomination of its first officers under the charter was committed to Increase Mather. As governor he proposed Sir William Phipps, a native of New England, who honestly loved his country, of a dull intellect, headstrong, and with a reason so feeble, that, in politics, he knew nothing of general principles, in religion, was the victim to superstition. Accustomed, from boyhood, to the axe and the oar, he had gained distinction only by his wealth, the fruits of his enterprise with the diving-bell in raising treasures from a Spanish wreck. His partners in this enterprise gained him the honor of knighthood; his present favor was due to the honest bigotry and ignorance which left him open to the influence of the ministers. Intercession had been made by Cotton Mather for the advancement of William Stoughton, a man of cold affections, proud, self-willed, and covetous of distinction. He had acted under James II. as deputy-president — a fit tool for such a king, joining in all "the miscarriages of the late government.' The people had rejected him, in their election of judges, giving him not a vote. Yielding to the request of his son, Increase Mather assigned to Stoughton the office of deputy-governor. "The twenty-eight assistants, who are the governor's council, every man of them," wrote the agent, "is a friend to the interests of the churches." "The time for favor is come," exulted Cotton Mather; "yea, the set time is come."

CHAPTER XXXVII.

WITCHCRAFT AT SALEM.

BUT, instead of a restoration of political power to the ministers, a revolution in opinion was impending. The reformation had rested truth on the Bible, as the Catholic church had rested it on authority in tradition; and a slavish interpretation of the Bible had led to a blind idolatry of the book. But true religion has no alliance with bondage; and, as the spirit of the reformation, which was but a less perfect form of freedom of mind, was advancing, reason was summoned to interpret the records of the past, and to separate time-hallowed errors from truths of the deepest moment. The statute-book, in obedience to this adoration of the letter, had asserted the existence of witchcraft by establishing death as its penalty; sustaining both the superstition and its punishment by reference to the Jewish records.

Belief in witchcraft had sprung alike from the letter of the Mosaic law, and from the natural wonder excited by the mysteries of nature; had fastened itself on the elements of religious faith, and become deeply branded into the common mind. Do not despise the credulity. The people did not rally to error; they accepted the superstition only because it had not yet been disengaged from religion.

In the last year of the administration of Andros, the daughter of John Goodwin, a child of thirteen years, charged a laundress with having stolen linen from the family. Glover, the mother of the laundress, a friendless emigrant, almost ignorant of English, like a true woman, with a mother's heart, rebuked the false accusation. Immediately the girl, to secure revenge, became bewitched. The infection spread. Three others of the family, the youngest a boy of less than five years old, soon succeeded in equally arresting public attention.

1688.]

WITCHCRAFT IN BOSTON.

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They would affect to be deaf, then dumb, then blind, or all three at once; they would bark like dogs, or purr like so many cats; but they ate well, and slept well. The magistrates, William Stoughton being one of the judges, and all holding commissions exclusively from the English king, with a "vigor" which the united ministers commended as "just," made "a discovery of the wicked instrument of the devil." The culprit was evidently a wild Irish woman, of a strange tongue.

Good

win, who made the complaint, "had no proof that could have done her any hurt;" but "the scandalous old hag,” whom some thought "crazed in her intellectuals," was bewildered, and made strange answers, which were taken as confessions. Accordingly she was condemned as a witch, and executed.

66

Cotton Mather,

There were skeptics in Boston. eager to learn the marvels of the world of spirits, and wishing to confute the Sadducism" of his times, invited the bewitched girl to his house; and she easily imposed upon his credulity. The devil would permit her to read in Quaker books, or the Common Prayer, or Popish books; but a prayer from Cotton Mather, or a chapter from the Bible, would throw her into convulsions. By a series of experiments, in reading aloud passages from the Bible in various languages, the minister satisfied himself, by trials of their capacity," that devils are well skilled in languages, and understand Latin, and Greek, and even Hebrew; though he fell upon one inferior Indian language which the demons did not seem so well to understand." The vanity of Cotton Mather was further gratified; for the bewitched girl would say that the demons could not enter his study, and that his own person was shielded by God against blows from the evil spirits.

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Yet the rapid progress of free inquiry was alarming. "There are multitudes of Sadducees in our day," sighed Cotton Mather. "Men count it wisdom to credit nothing but what they see and feel. They never saw any witches; therefore there are none."