The Loyalists of America and Their Times Volume I Part 8
THE GOVERNMENT OF Ma.s.sACHUSETTS BAY UNDER THE LONG PARLIAMENT, THE COMMONWEALTH, AND CROMWELL.
Charles the First ceased to rule after 1640, though his death did not take place until January, 1649. The General Court of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay, in their address to the King's Commissioners in September, 1637, professed to offer "earnest prayers for long life and prosperity to his sacred Majesty and his royal family, and all honour and welfare to their Lordships;" but as soon as there was a prospect of a change, and the power of the King began to decline and that of Parliament began to increase, the Puritans of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay transferred all their sympathies and a.s.siduities to the Parliament. In 1641, they sent over three agents to evoke interest with the Parliamentary leaders--one layman, Mr. Hibbins, and two ministers, Thomas Weld and Hugh Peters, the latter of whom was as shrewd and active in trade and speculations as he was ardent and violent in the pulpit. He made quite a figure in the civil war in England, and was Cromwell's favourite war chaplain. Neither he nor Weld ever returned to New England.
As the persecution of Puritans ceased in England, emigration to New England ceased; trade became depressed and property greatly depreciated in value; population became stationary in New England during the whole Parliamentary and Commonwealth rule in England, from 1640 to 1660--more returning from New England to England than emigrating thither from England.[73]
The first success of this mission of Hugh Peters and his colleagues soon appeared. By the Royal Charter of 1629, the King encouraged the Ma.s.sachusetts Company by remitting all taxes upon the property of the Plantations for the s.p.a.ce of seven years, and all customs and duties upon their exports and imports, to or from any British port, for the s.p.a.ce of twenty-one years, except the five per cent. due upon their goods and merchandise, according to the ancient trade of merchants; but the Ma.s.sachusetts delegates obtained an ordinance of Parliament, or rather an order of the House of Commons, complimenting the colony on its progress and hopeful prospects, and discharging all the exports of the natural products of the colony and all the goods imported into it for its own use, from the payment of any custom or taxation whatever.[74]
On this resolution of the Commons three remarks may be made: 1. As in all previous communications between the King and the Colony, the House of Commons termed the colony a "Plantation," and the colonists "Planters." Two years afterwards the colony of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay a.s.sumed to itself (without Charter or Act of Parliament) the t.i.tle and style of "a Commonwealth." 2. While the House of Commons speaks of the prospects being "very happy for the propagation of the Gospel in those parts," the Ma.s.sachusetts colony had not established a single mission or employed a single missionary or teacher for the instruction of the Indians. 3. The House of Commons exempts the colony from payment of all duties on articles exported from or imported into the colony, _until the House of Commons shall take further order therein to the contrary_,--clearly implying and a.s.suming, as beyond doubt, the right of the House of Commons to impose or abolish such duties at its pleasure. The colonists of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay voted hearty thanks to the House of Commons for this resolution, and ordered it to be entered on their public records as a proof to posterity of the gracious favour of Parliament.[75]
The Ma.s.sachusetts General Court did not then complain of the Parliament invading their Charter privileges, in a.s.suming its right to tax or not tax their imports and exports; but rebelled against Great Britain a hundred and thirty years afterwards, because the Parliament a.s.serted and applied the same principle.
The Puritan Court of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay were not slow in reciprocating the kind expressions and acts of the Long Parliament, and identifying themselves completely with it against the King. In 1644 they pa.s.sed an Act, in which they allowed perfect freedom of opinion, discussion, and action on the side of Parliament, but none on the side of the King; the one party in the colony could say and act as they pleased (and many of them went to England and joined Cromwell's army or got places in public departments); no one of the other party was allowed to give expression to his opinions, either "directly or indirectly," without being "accounted as an offender of a high nature against this Commonwealth, and to be prosecuted, capitally or otherwise, according to the quality and degree of his offence."[76]
The New England historians have represented the acts of Charles the First as arbitrary and tyrannical in inquiring into the affairs of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay, and in the appointment of a Governor-General and Commissioners to investigate all their proceedings and regulate them; and it might be supposed that the Puritan Parliament in England and the General Court of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay would be at one in regard to local independence of the colony of any control or interference on the part of the Parent State. But the very year after the House of Commons had adopted so gracious an order to exempt the exports and imports of the colony from all taxation, both Houses of Parliament pa.s.sed an Act for the appointment of a Governor-General and seventeen Commissioners--five Lords and twelve Commoners--with unlimited powers over all the American colonies. Among the members of the House of Commons composing this Commission were Sir Harry Vane and Oliver Cromwell. The t.i.tle of this Act, in Hazard, is as follows:
"An Ordinance of the Lords and Commons a.s.sembled in Parliament: whereby Robert Earl of Warwick is made Governor-in-Chief and Lord High Admiral of all those Islands and Plantations inhabited, planted, or belonging to any of his Majesty the King of England's subjects, within the bounds and upon the coasts of America, and a Committee appointed to be a.s.sisting unto him, for the better government, strengthening and preservation of the said Plantations; but chiefly for the advancement of the true Protestant religion, and further spreading of the Gospel of Christ[77]
among those that yet remain there, in great and miserable blindness and ignorance."[78]
This Act places all the affairs of the colonies, with the appointment of Governors and all other local officers, under the direct control of Parliament, through its general Governor and Commissioners, and shows beyond doubt that the Puritans of the Long Parliament held the same views with those of Charles the First, and George the Third, and Lord North a century afterwards, as to the authority of the British Parliament over the American colonies. Whether those views were right or wrong, they were the views of all parties in England from the beginning for more than a century, as to the relations between the British Parliament and the colonies. The views on this subject held and maintained by the United Empire Loyalists, during the American Revolution of 1776, were those which had been held by all parties in England, whether Puritans or Churchmen, from the first granting of the Charter to the Company of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay in 1629. The a.s.sumptions and statements of American historians to the contrary on this subject are at variance with all the preceding facts of colonial history.[79]
Mr. Bancroft makes no mention of this important ordinance pa.s.sed by both Houses of the Long Parliament;[80] nor does Hutchinson, or Graham, or Palfrey. Less sweeping acts of authority over the colonies, by either of the Charters, are portrayed by these historians with minuteness and power, if not in terms of exaggeration. The most absolute and comprehensive authority as to both appointments and trade in the colonies ordered by the Long Parliament and Commonwealth are referred to in brief and vague terms, or not at all noticed, by the historical eulogist of the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Puritans,[81] who, while they were a.s.serting their independence of the royal rule of England, claimed and exercised absolute rule over individual consciences and religious liberty in Ma.s.sachusetts, not only against Episcopalians, but equally against Presbyterians and Baptists; for this very year, says Hutchinson, "several persons came from England in 1643, made a muster to set Presbyterian government under the authority of the a.s.sembly of Westminster; but the New England a.s.sembly, the General Court, soon put them to the rout."[82] And in the following year, 1644, these "Fathers of American liberty" adopted measures equally decisive to "rout" the Baptists. The ordinance pa.s.sed on this subject, the "13th of the 9th month, 1644," commences thus: "Forasmuch as experience hath plentifully and often proved that since the first arising of the Anabaptists, about one hundred years since, they have been the incendaries of the Commonwealths and the infectors of persons in main matters of religion, and the troubles of churches in all places where they have been, and that they who have held the baptizing of infants unlawful, have usually held other errors or heresies therewith, though they have (as other heretics used to do) concealed the same till they spied out a fit advantage and opportunity to vent them by way of question or scruple,"
etc.: "It is ordered and agreed, that if any person or persons within this jurisdiction shall either openly condemn _or_ oppose the baptizing of infants, _or_ go about secretly to seduce others from the approbation or use thereof, _or_ shall purposely depart the congregation at the ministration of the ordinance, _or_ shall deny the ordinance of magistracy, or their lawful right and authority to make war, _or_ to punish the outward breakers of the first Table, and shall appear to the Court to continue therein after the due time and means of conviction, _shall be sentenced to banishment_."[83]
In the following year, 1646, the Presbyterians, not being satisfied with having been "put to the rout" in 1643, made a second attempt to establish their worship within the jurisdiction of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay.
Mr. Palfrey terms this attempt a "Presbyterian cabal," and calls its leaders "conspirators." They pet.i.tioned the General Court or Legislature of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay, and on the rejection of their pet.i.tion they proposed to appeal to the Parliament in England. They were persecuted for both acts. It was pretended that they were punished, not for pet.i.tioning the local Court, but for the expressions used in their pet.i.tion--the same as it had been said seventeen years before, that the Messrs. Brown were banished, not because they were Episcopalians, but because, when called before Endicot and his councillors, they used offensive expressions in justification of their conduct in continuing to worship as they had done in England. In their case, in 1629, the use and worship of the Prayer Book was forbidden, and the promoters of it banished, and their papers seized; in this case, in 1646, the Presbyterian worship was forbidden, and the promoters of it were imprisoned and fined, and their papers seized. In both cases the victims of religious intolerance and civil tyranny were men of the highest position and intelligence. The statements of the pet.i.tioners in 1646 (the truth of which could not be denied, though the pet.i.tioners were punished for telling it) show the state of bondage and oppression to which all who would not join the Congregational Churches--that is, five-sixths of the population--were reduced under this system of Church government--the Congregational Church members alone electors, alone eligible to be elected, alone law-makers and law administrators, alone imposing taxes, alone providing military stores and commanding the soldiery; and then the victims of such a Government were p.r.o.nounced and punished as "conspirators" and "traitors" when they ventured to appeal for redress to the Mother Country. The most exclusive and irresponsible Government that ever existed in Canada in its earliest days never approached such a despotism as this of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay. I leave the reader to decide, when he peruses what was pet.i.tioned for--first to the Ma.s.sachusetts Legislature, and then to the English Parliament--who were the real "traitors" and who the "conspirators" against right and liberty: the "Presbyterian cabal," as Mr. Palfrey terms the pet.i.tioners, or those who imprisoned and fined them, and seized their papers. Mr.
Hutchinson, the best informed and most candid of the New England historians, states the affair of the pet.i.tioners, their proceedings and treatment, and the pet.i.tion which they presented, as follows:
"A great disturbance was caused in the colony this year [1646] by a number of persons of figure, but of different sentiments, both as to civil and ecclesiastical government, from the people in general. They had laid a scheme for pet.i.tion of such as were non-freemen to the courts of both colonies, and upon the pet.i.tions being refused, to apply to the Parliament, pretending they were subjected to arbitrary power, extra-judicial proceedings, etc. The princ.i.p.al things complained of by the pet.i.tioners were:
"1st. That the fundamental laws of England were not owned by the Colony, as the basis of their government, according to the patent.
"2nd. The denial of those civil privileges, which the freemen of the jurisdiction enjoyed, to such as were not members of Churches, and did not take an oath of fidelity devised by the authority here, although they were freeborn Englishmen, of sober lives and conversation, etc.
"3rd. That they were debarred from Christian privileges, viz., the Lord's Supper for themselves, and baptism for their children, unless they were members of some of the particular Churches in the country, though otherwise sober, righteous, and G.o.dly, and eminent for knowledge, not scandalous in life and conversation, and members of Churches in England.
"And they prayed that civil liberty and freedom might be forthwith granted to all truly English, and that all members of the Church of England or Scotland, not scandalous, might be admitted to the privileges of the Churches of New England; or if these civil and religious liberties were refused, that they might be freed from the heavy taxes imposed upon them, and from the impresses made of them or their children or servants into the war; and if they failed of redress there, they should be under the necessity of making application to England, to the honourable Houses of Parliament, who they hoped would take their sad condition, etc.
"But if their prayer should be granted, they hoped to see the then contemned ordinances of G.o.d highly prized; the Gospel, then dark, break forth as the sun; Christian charity, then frozen, wax warm; jealousy of arbitrary government banished; strife and contention abated; and all business in Church and State, which for many years had gone backward, successfully thriving, etc.
"The Court, and great part of the country, were much offended at this pet.i.tion. A declaration was drawn up by order of the Court, in answer to the pet.i.tion, and in vindication of the Government--a proceeding which at this day would not appear for the honour of the supreme authority.
The pet.i.tioners were required to attend the Court. They urged their right of pet.i.tioning. They were told they were not accused of pet.i.tioning, but of contemptuous and seditious expressions, and were required to find sureties for their good behaviour, etc. A charge was drawn up against them in form; notwithstanding which it was intimated to them, that if they would ingenuously acknowledge their offence, they should be forgiven; but they refused, and were fined, some in larger, some in smaller sums, two or three of the magistrates dissenting, Mr.
Bellingham,[85] in particular, desiring his dissent might be entered.
The pet.i.tioners claimed an appeal to the Commissioners of Plantations in England; but it was not allowed. Some of them resolved to go home with a complaint. Their papers were seized, and among them was found a pet.i.tion to the Right Honourable the Earl of Warwick, etc., Commissioners, from about five and twenty non-freemen, for themselves and many thousands more, in which they represent that from the pulpits[86] they had been reproached and branded with the names of destroyers of Churches and Commonwealths, called Hamans, Judases, sons of Korah, and the Lord entreated to confound them, and the people and magistrates stirred up against them by those who were too forward to step out of their callings, so that they had been sent for to the Court, and some of them committed for refusing to give two hundred pounds bond to stand to the sentence of the Court, _when all the crime was a pet.i.tion to the Court_, and they had been publicly used as malefactors, etc.
"Mr. Winslow, who had been chosen agent for the colony to answer to Gorton's complaint, was now instructed to make defence against these pet.i.tioners; and by his prudent management, and the credit and esteem he was in with many members of the Parliament and princ.i.p.al persons then in power, he prevented any prejudice to the colony from either of these applications."[87]
Mr. (Edward) Winslow, above mentioned by Mr. Hutchinson, had been one of the founders and Governors of the _Plymouth_ colony; but twenty-five years afterwards he imbibed the persecuting spirit of the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay colony, became their agent and advocate in London, and by the prestige which he had acquired as the first narrator and afterwards Governor of the Plymouth colony, had much influence with the leading men of the Long Parliament. He there joined himself to Cromwell, and was appointed one of his three Commissioners to the West Indies, where he died in 1655. Cromwell, as he said when he first obtained possession of the King, had "the Parliament in his pocket;" he had abolished the Prayer Book and its worship; he had expurgated the army of Presbyterians, and filled their places with Congregationalists; he was repeating the same process in Parliament; and through him, therefore (who was also Commander-in-Chief of all the Parliamentary forces), Mr.
Winslow had little difficulty in stifling the appeal from Ma.s.sachusetts Bay for liberty of worship in behalf of both Presbyterians and Episcopalians.
But was ever a pet.i.tion to a local Legislature more const.i.tutional, or more open and manly in the manner of its getting up, more Christian in its sentiments and objects? Yet the pet.i.tioners were arraigned and punished as "conspirators" and "disturbers of the public peace," by order of that Legislature, for openly pet.i.tioning to it against some of its own acts. Was ever appeal to the Imperial Parliament by British subjects more justifiable than that of Dr. Child, Mr. Dand, Mr. Va.s.sal (progenitor of British Peers), and others, from acts of a local Government which deprived them of both religious rights of worship and civil rights of franchise, of all things earthly most valued by enlightened men, and without which the position of man is little better than that of goods and chattels? Yet the respectable men who appealed to the supreme power of the realm for the attainment of these attributes of Christian and British citizenship were imprisoned and heavily fined, and their private papers seized and sequestered!
In my own native country of Upper Canada, the Government for nearly half a century was considered despotic, and held up by American writers themselves as an unbearable tyranny. But one Church was alleged to be established in the country, and the government was that of a Church party; but never was the elective franchise there confined to the members of the one Church; never were men and women denied, or hailed before the legal tribunals and fined for exercising the privilege of Baptism, the Lord's Supper, or public worship for themselves and families according to the dictates of their own consciences; never was the humblest inhabitant denied the right of pet.i.tion to the local Legislature on any subject, or against any governmental acts, or the right of appeal to the Imperial Government or Parliament on the subject of any alleged grievance. The very suspicion and allegation that the Canadian Government did counteract, by influences and secret representations, the statements of complaining parties to England, roused public indignation as arbitrary and unconst.i.tutional. Even the insurrection which took place in both Upper and Lower Canada in 1837 and 1838 was professedly against alleged partiality and injustice by the _local_ Government, as an obstruction to more liberal policy believed to be desired by the Imperial Government.
But here, in Ma.s.sachusetts, a colony chartered as a Company to distribute and settle public lands and carry on trade, in less than twenty years a.s.sumes the powers of a sovereign Commonwealth, denies to five-sixths of the population the freedom of citizenship, and limits it to the members of one Church, and denies Baptism, the Lord's Supper, and worship to all who will not come to the one Church, punishes pet.i.tioners to itself for civil and religious freedom from those who were deprived of it, and punishes as "treason" their appeal for redress to the English Parliament. Though, for the present, this unprecedented and unparalleled local despotism was sustained by the ingenious representations of Mr.
Winslow and the power of Cromwell; yet in the course of four years the surrender of its Charter was ordered by the regicide councillors of the Commonwealth, as it had been ordered by the beheaded King Charles and his Privy Council thirteen years before. In the meantime tragical events in England diverted attention from the colonies. The King was made prisoner, then put to death; the Monarchy was abolished, as well as the House of Lords; and the Long Parliament became indeed Cromwell's "pocket" instrument.
It was manifest that the government of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay as a colony was impossible, with the pretensions which it had set up, declaring all appeals to England to be "treason," and punishing complainants as "conspirators" and "traitors." The appointment by Parliament in 1643 of a Governor-General and Commissioners had produced no effect in Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Colony; pretensions to supremacy and persecution were as rife as ever there. Dr. Child and his friends were punished for even asking for the administration that appointed the Governor-General and those Commissioners; and whether the Government of England were a monarchy or republic, it was clear that the pretensions to independence of the Puritans of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay must be checked, and their local tyranny restrained. For this purpose the Long Parliament adopted the same policy in 1650 that King Charles had done in 1637; demanded the surrender of the Charter; for that Parliament sent a summons to the local Government ordering it to transmit the Charter to England, to receive a new patent from the Parliament in all its acts and processes.
This order of Parliament to Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Colony to surrender its Charter was accompanied by a proclamation prohibiting trade with Virginia, Barbadoes, Bermuda, and Antigua, because these colonies continued to recognize royal authority, and to administer their laws in the name of the King. This duplicate order from the Long Parliament was a double blow to the colony of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay, and produced general consternation; but the dexterity and diplomacy of the colony were equal to the occasion. It showed its devotion to the cause of the Long Parliament by pa.s.sing an Act prohibiting trade with the loyal, but by them termed rebel colonies;[88] and it avoided surrendering the Charter by repeating its policy of delay and pet.i.tion, which it had adopted on a similar occasion in 1638 to King Charles; and its professions of loyalty to Charles, and prayers for the Royal Family, and the success of the Privy Council, it now repeated for the Long Parliament and its leaders, supporting its pet.i.tion by an appeal to its ten years' services of prayers and of men to the cause of the Long Parliament against the King. I will, in the first place, give in a note Mr. Bancroft's own account of what was claimed and ordered by the Long Parliament, and the pretensions and proceedings of the Legislature of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay, and then will give the princ.i.p.al parts of their pet.i.tion to the Long Parliament in their own words. The words and statements of Mr. Bancroft involve several things worthy of notice and remembrance: 1. The Congregational Church rulers of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay denied being British subjects, admitting no other allegiance to England than the Hanse Towns of Northern Germany to the Empire of Austria, or the Normandy ducal kings of England to the King of France; or, as Mr. Palfrey says, "the relations which Burgundy and Flanders hold to France." 2. Mr. Bancroft calls the pet.i.tioners "disturbers of the public security," and Mr.
Palfrey calls them "conspirators"--terms applied to the Armenian remonstrants against the persecuting edicts of the Synod of Dort--terms applied to all the complainants of the exclusive and persecuting policy of the Tudor and Stuart kings of England--terms applied to even the first Christians--terms now applied to pleaders of religious and civil freedom by the advocates of a Ma.s.sachusetts Government as intolerant and persecuting as ever existed in Europe. The pet.i.tion of these impugned parties shows that all they asked for was equal religious and civil liberty and protection with their Congregational oppressors. Opprobrious names are not arguments; and imputations of motives and character are not facts, and are usually resorted to for want of them. 3. Mr. Bancroft designates as "usurpations of Parliament" the proceedings of the Long Parliament in appointing a Governor-General and Commissioners for the colonies, and in exercising its right to receive and decide upon appeals from the colonies; and terms the support of the Parliament in the colony "domestic treachery;" and the one member of the Legislature who had the courage to maintain the supremacy of the Mother Country is called the "faithless deputy," who was forthwith turned out of the House, which then proceeded, "with closed doors," to discuss in secret conclave its relations to England, and concluded by declaring "against any a.s.sertion of paramount authority" on the part of the English Parliament. This was substantially a "Declaration of Independence;" not, indeed, against an arbitrary king, as was alleged sixteen years before, and a hundred and thirty years afterwards, but against a Parliament which had dethroned and beheaded their King, and abolished the House of Lords and the Episcopal Church! All this Mr. Bancroft now treats as maintaining the _Charter_, of which he himself had declared, in another place, as I have quoted above: "The Charter on which the freemen of Ma.s.sachusetts succeeded in erecting a system of independent representative liberty did not secure to them a single privilege of self-government, but left them as the Virginians had been left, without any valuable franchise, at the mercy of the Corporation within the realm." Who then were the "usurpers," and had been for twenty years, of power which had not been conferred on them--the new Church and the persecuting Government of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay, or the supreme authority of England, both under a King and under a professed republican commonwealth? 4. Mr. Bancroft says: "Had the Long Parliament succeeded in revoking the patent of the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay,[90] the tenor of American history would have been changed." I agree with him in this opinion, though probably not in his application of it. I believe that the "tenor of American history" would have led to as perfect an independence of the American States as they now enjoy--as free, but a better system of government, and without their ever having made war and bloodshed against Great Britain.
The facts thus referred to show that there were _Empire Loyalists_ in America in the seventeenth, as there were afterwards in the eighteenth century; they then embraced all the colonies of New England, except the ruling party of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay; they were all advocates of an equal franchise, and equal religious and civil liberty for all cla.s.ses--the very reverse of the Ma.s.sachusetts Government, which, while it denied any subordination to England, denied religious and civil liberty to all cla.s.ses except members of the Congregational Churches.
It is a curious and significant fact, stated by Mr. Bancroft, that these intolerant and persecuting proceedings of the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Legislature were submitted to the Congregational ministers for their approval and final endors.e.m.e.nt. The Long Parliament in England checked and ruled the a.s.sembly of Westminster divines; but in Ma.s.sachusetts the divines, after a day's consideration, "approved the proceedings of the General Court." No wonder that such divines, supported by taxes levied by the State and rulers of the State, denounced all toleration of dissent from their Church and authority.
Before leaving this subject, I must notice the remarks of Mr.
Palfrey,--the second, if not first in authority of the historians of New England.
Mr. Palfrey ascribes what he calls "the Presbyterian Cabal" to Mr.
William Va.s.sal, who was one of the founders and first Council of the colony of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay, whose brother Samuel had shared with Hampden the honour of having refused to pay ship-money to Charles, and who was now, with the Earl of Warwick,[91] one of the Parliamentary Commissioners for the colonies. It appears that Mr. Va.s.sal opposed from the beginning the new system of Church and proscriptive civil government set up at Ma.s.sachusetts Bay, and therefore came under Mr. Bancroft's category of "disturbers of the public security," and Mr. Palfrey's designation of "conspirators;" but was in reality a liberal and a loyalist, not to King Charles indeed, but to the Commonwealth of England. I give Mr. Palfrey's statements, in his own words, in a note.[92]
The spirit and sentiments of Mr. Palfrey are identical with those which I have quoted of Mr. Bancroft; but while Mr. Bancroft speaks contemptuously of the authors of the pet.i.tion for equal civil and religious rights, Mr. Palfrey traces the movement to Mr. William Va.s.sal, one of the founders and first Council of the Ma.s.sachusetts Colony, and progenitor of the famous Whig family of Holland House. Nor does Mr.
Palfrey venture to question the doctrine or one of the statements of the pet.i.tioners, though he calls them "conspirators."
Mr. Palfrey--very unfairly, I think--imputes to the pet.i.tioners a design to subvert the Congregational worship and establish the Presbyterian worship in its place; and to give force to his imputations says that a numerous party in the English Parliament "were bent on setting up Presbytery as the established religion in England and _its dependencies_." There is not the slightest ground for a.s.serting that any party in the Long Parliament, any more than in Ma.s.sachusetts, designed the setting up of Presbytery as _the_ established worship in the "_dependencies_ of England." King Charles the First, on his first sitting in judgment on complaints against the proceedings of the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Council, declared to his Privy Council, in 1632, that he had never intended to impose the Church ceremonies, objected to by the Puritan clergy of the time, upon the colonists of Ma.s.sachusetts.
Charles the Second, thirty years afterwards, declared the same, and acted upon it during the quarter of a century of his reign. The Long Parliament acted upon the same principle. There is not an instance, during the whole sixty years of the first Ma.s.sachusetts Charter, of any attempt, on the part of either King or Commonwealth, to suppress or interfere with the Congregational worship in New England; all that was asked by the King, or any party in Ma.s.sachusetts, was _toleration_ of other forms of Protestant worship as well as that of the Congregational.
The very pet.i.tion, whose promoters are represented as movers of sedition, asked for no exclusive establishment of Presbyterianism, but for the toleration of both the Episcopal and Presbyterian worship, and the worship of other Protestant Churches existing in England; and their pet.i.tion was addressed to a Legislature of Congregationalists, elected by Congregationalists alone; and it was only in the event of their reasonable requests not being granted by the local Legislature that they proposed to present their grievances to the Imperial Parliament. The plea of fear for the safety of Congregational worship in Ma.s.sachusetts was a mere pretence to justify the proscription and persecution of all dissent from the Congregational establishment. The spirit of the local Government and of the clergy that controlled it was _intolerance_.
Toleration was denounced by them as the doctrine of devils; and the dying lines of Governor Dudley are reported to have been--
"Let men of G.o.d, in Court and Church, watch O'er such as do a toleration hatch."[94]
There is one other of Mr. Palfrey's statements which is of special importance; it is the admission that a majority of the population of Ma.s.sachusetts were excluded from all share in the Government, and were actually opposed to it. Referring to the pet.i.tion to the local Legislature, he says: "The demand was enforced by considerations which were not without plausibility, and were presented in a seductive form.
It was itself an appeal to the _discontent of the numerical majority not invested with a share in the government_."[95]
It is thus admitted, and clear from indubitable facts, that professing to be republicans, they denied to the great majority of the people any share in the government. Professing hatred of the persecuting intolerance of King Charles and Laud in denying liberty of worship to all who differed from them, they now deny liberty of worship to all who differ from themselves, and punish those by fine and imprisonment who even pet.i.tion for equal religious and civil liberty to all cla.s.ses of citizens. They justify even armed resistance against the King, and actually decapitating as well as dethroning him, in order to obtain, professedly, a government by the majority of the nation and liberty of worship; and they now deny the same principle and right of civil and religious liberty to the great majority of the people over whom they claimed rule. They claim the right of resisting Parliament itself by armed force if they had the power, and only desist from a.s.serting it, to the last, as the _salus populi_ did not require it, and for the sake of their "G.o.dly friends in England," and to not afford a pretext for the "rebellious course" of their fellow-colonists in Virginia and the West Indies, who claimed the same independence of Parliament that the Government of Ma.s.sachusetts claimed, but upon the ground which was abhorrent to the Congregational Puritans of Ma.s.sachusetts--namely, that of loyalty to the king.
I will now give in a note, in their own words, the princ.i.p.al parts of their pet.i.tion, ent.i.tled "General Court of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay, New England, in a Pet.i.tion to Parliament in 1651,"[97] together with extracts of two addresses to Cromwell, the one enclosing a copy of their pet.i.tion to Parliament, when he was Commander-in-Chief of the army, and the other in 1654, after he had dismissed the Rump Parliament, and become absolute--denying to the whole people of England the elective franchise, as his admiring friends in Ma.s.sachusetts denied it to the great majority of the people within their jurisdiction. Chalmers says they "outfawned and outwitted Cromwell." They gained his support by their first address, and thanked him for it in their second. Having "the Parliament in his pocket" until he threw even the rump of it aside altogether, Cromwell caused Parliament to desist from executing its own order.
It will be seen in the following chapter, that ten years after these laudatory addresses to Parliament and Cromwell, the same General Court of Ma.s.sachusetts addressed Charles the Second in words truly loyal and equally laudatory, and implored the continuance of their Charter upon the ground, among other reasons, that they had never identified themselves with the Parliament against his Royal father, but had been "pa.s.sive" during the whole of that contest. Their act against having any commerce with the colonies who adhered to the King indicated their neutrality; and the reader, by reading their addresses to the Parliament and Cromwell, will see whether they did not thoroughly identify themselves with the Parliament and Cromwell against Charles the First.
They praise Cromwell as raised up by the special hand of G.o.d, and crave upon him the success of "the Captain of the Lord's hosts;" and they claim the favourable consideration of Parliament to their request upon the ground that they had identified themselves with its fortunes to rise or fall with it; that they had aided it by their prayers and fastings, and by men who had rendered it valuable service. The reader will be able to judge of the agreement in their _professions_ and _statements_ in their addresses to Parliament and Cromwell and to King Charles the Second ten years afterwards. In their addresses to Parliament and Cromwell they professed their readiness to _fall_ as well as rise with the cause of the Parliament; but when that _fell_, they repudiated all connection with it.
In the year 1651, and during the very Session of Parliament to which the General Court addressed its pet.i.tion and narrated its sacrifices and doings in the cause of the Parliament, the latter pa.s.sed the famous Navigation Act, which was re-enacted and improved ten years afterwards, under Charles the Second, and which became the primary pretext of the American Revolution. The Commonwealth was at this time at war with the Dutch republic, which had almost destroyed and absorbed the shipping trade of England. Admiral Blake was just commencing that series of naval victories which have immortalized his name, and placed England from that time to this at the head of the naval powers of the world. Sir Henry Vane, as the Minister of the Navy, devised and carried through Parliament the famous Navigation Act--an Act which the colony of Ma.s.sachusetts, by the connivance of Cromwell (who now identified himself with that colony), regularly evaded, at the expense of the American colonies and the English revenue.[98] Mr. Palfrey says:
"The people of Ma.s.sachusetts might well be satisfied with their condition and prospects. Everything was prospering with them. They had established comfortable homes, which they felt strong enough to defend against any power but the power of the Mother Country; and that was friendly. They had always the good-will of Cromwell. In relation _to them_, he allowed the Navigation Law, _which pressed on the Southern colonies, to became_ A DEAD LETTER, and they received the commodities of all nations free of duty, and sent their ships to all the ports of continental Europe."[99]
But that in which the ruling spirits of the Ma.s.sachusetts General Court--apart from their ceaseless endeavours to monopolise trade and extend territory--seemed to revel most was in searching out and punishing _dissent_ from the Congregational Establishment, and, at times, with the individual liberty of citizens in sumptuary matters. No Laud ever equalled them in this, or excelled them in enforcing uniformity, not only of doctrine, but of opinions and practice in the minutest particulars. When a stand against England was to be taken, in worship, or inquisition into matters of religions dissent, and woman's apparel, Endicot became Governor (according to the "advice of the Elders" in such matters), and Winthrop was induced to be Deputy Governor, although the latter was hardly second to the former in the spirit and acts of religious persecution. He had been a wealthy man in England, and was well educated and amiable; but after his arrival at Ma.s.sachusetts Bay he seems to have wanted firmness to resist the intolerant spirit and narrow views of Endicot. He died in 1649. Mr.
Palfrey remarks: "Whether it was owing to solicitude as to the course of affairs in England after the downfall of the Royal power, or to the absence of the moderating influence of Winthrop, or to sentiments engendered, on the one hand by the alarm from the Presbyterians in 1646, and on the other by the confidence inspired by the [Congregational]