CHAP. of a governor and counsellors, of whom eight out of IX. the thirteen were appointed by the corporation in 1629. England; three were to be named by these eight: and, as it was said, to remove all grounds of discontent, the choice of the remaining two counsellors was granted to the colonists as a liberal boon. The board, when thus constituted, was invested with all the powers of legislation, justice, and administration. Such was the inauspicious dawn of civil and religious liberty on the Bay of Massachusetts.1 Benevolent instructions to Endicot were at the same time issued. "If any of the salvages"-such were the orders long and uniformly followed in all changes of government, and placed on record more than half a century before William Penn proclaimed the principles of peace on the borders of the Delaware "pretend right of inheritance to all or any part of the lands granted in our patent, we pray you endeavor to purchase their tytle, that we may avoid the least scruple of intrusion." "Particularly publish, that no wrong or injury be offered to the natives." 2 The departure of the fleet for America was now anxiously desired. The colonists were to be cheered by the presence of religious teachers; and the excellent and truly catholic Francis Higginson, an eminent non-conforming minister, receiving an invitation to conduct the emigrants, esteemed it as a call from Heaven. The propagation of the gospel among the heathen was earnestly desired; in pious sincerity it was resolved if possible to redeem these wrecks of human nature; the colony seal was an Indian, erect, 3 1 Col. Records. Hazard, i. 256 -268, and 268-271. Bentley, in 1. Mass. Hist. Coll. vi. 235, 236. 2 Hazard, i. 263. 277. 3 Hutchinson's Coll. 24, 25. Hubbard, 112. THE EMIGRATION WITH JOHN HIGGINSON. 347 IX. with an arrow in his right hand, and the motto, CHAP. "Come over and help us; "-a device of which the appropriateness has been lost by the modern substitu- 1629 tion of the favorite line of Algernon Sidney;—and three additional ministers attended the expedition. The company of emigrants was winnowed before sailing; and servants of ill life were discharged. "No idle drone may live amongst us, 19 2 was the spirit as well as the law of the dauntless community, which was to turn the sterility of New England into a cluster of wealthy states. As the ships were bearing Higginson and his fol- May lowers out of sight of their native land, they remembered it, not as the scene of their sufferings from intolerance, but as the home of their fathers, and the dwelling-place of their friends. They did not say "Farewell, Babylon! farewell, Rome! but FAREwell, DEAR ENGLAND ! " 3 It was in the last days of June, that the little band of two hundred arrived at Salem, where the "corruptions of the English church" were never to be planted, and where a new "reformation" was to be reduced to practice. They found neither church nor town; eight or ten pitiful hovels, one more stately tenement for the governor, and a few cornfields, were the only proofs that they had been preceded by their countrymen. The whole body of old and new planters now amounted to three hundred; of whom one third joined the infant settlement at Charlestown.1 1 Douglass, i. 409. Douglass is of course, the highest authority. almost as rash as Oldmixon. 2 Hazard, i. 283, 284. 256. 3 Mather, b. iii. c. i. s. 12. See Hutchinson's Collection, 32— 4 Higginson's whole account is, Prince, 261. CHAP. To the great European world the few tenants of the mud-hovels and log-cabins at Salem might appear 1629. too insignificant to merit notice; to themselves they were as the chosen emissaries of God; outcasts from England, yet favorites with Heaven; destitute of security, of convenient food and shelter, and yet blessed beyond all mankind, for they were the depositaries of the purest truth, and the selected instruments to kindle in the wilderness the beacon of pure religion, of which the undying light should not only penetrate the wigwams of the heathen, but spread its benignant beams across the darkness of the whole civilized world. The emigrants were not so much a body politic, as a church in the wilderness, with no benefactor around them but nature, no present sovereign but God. An entire July separation was made between state and church; religious worship was established on the basis of the independence of each separate religious community; all Aug. officers of the church were elected by its members; and these rigid Calvinists, of whose rude intolerance the world has been filled with malignant calumnies, subscribed a covenant, cherishing, it is true, the severest virtues, but without one tinge of fanaticism. It was an act of piety, not of study; it favored virtue, not superstition; inquiry, and not submission. The people were enthusiasts, but not bigots.1 The church was self-constituted. It did not ask the assent of the king, or recognize him as its head; its officers were Aug. set apart and ordained among themselves;3 it used no liturgy; it rejected unnecessary ceremonies, and reduced the simplicity of Calvin to a still plainer stand 20. 6. 24. 1 See the covenant in Neal's N. E., i. 141-143, and in Bentley's Salem, App. No. iv. 2 Hubbard, 116-120. Prince, 263, 264. Neal's N. England, i. 144. 3 Felt's Annals of Salem, 573an accurate and useful work, the fruit of much original research. ard. ESTABLISHMENT OF RELIGIOUS INDEPENDENCE. 349 IX. The motives which controlled their decisions CHAP. were so deeply seated in the character of their party, that the doctrine and discipline established at Salem 1629. remained the rule of Puritan New England. There existed, even in this little band, a few to whom the new system was unexpected; and in John and Samuel Browne they found able leaders. Both were members of the colonial council; both were reputed "sincere in their affection for the good of the plantation;" they had been favorites of the corporation in England; and one of them, an experienced lawyer, had been a member of the board of assistants in London. They refused to unite with the public assembly, and, resting on the authority of English law, and their rights under the charter, they gathered a company, in which "the Common Prayer worship" was upheld. But should the emigrants-thus the colonists reasoned-give up the very purpose for which they had crossed the Atlantic? Should the hierarchy intrude on their devotions in the forests of Massachusetts? They deemed the coëxistence of their liberty and of prelacy impossible: anticipating invasions of their rights, they feared the adherents of the Establishment, as spies in the camp; and the form of religion from which they had suffered, was therefore repelled, not as a sect, but as a tyranny. "You are Separatists," said the Brownes, in self-defence, "and you will shortly be Anabaptists." "We separate,' answered the ministers, "not from the Church of England, but from its corruptions. We came away from the Common Prayer and Ceremonies, in our native land, where we suffered much for non-conformity: in this place of liberty, we cannot, we will not, use them. Their imposition would be a sinful violation of the worship of God." The governor, whose self-will was CHAP. inflamed by fanaticism, and whose religious antipathies IX. persecution had matured into hatred, the council and 1629. the people applauded; the adherents of Episcopacy 1629, 1630. 1629. were in their turn rebuked as separatists; their plea was reproved as sedition, their worship forbidden as a mutiny; while the Brownes, who could not be terrified into silence, were seized like criminals, and in the returning ships were transported to England. They were banished from Salem because they were Churchmen. Thus was Episcopacy first professed in Massachusetts, and thus was it exiled. The blessings of the promised land were to be kept for Puritanic dissenters. Winter brought disease and the sufferings incident to early settlements. Above eighty-almost half of the emigrants-died before spring, lamenting only that they were removed from the world before beholding the perfect establishment of their religion. Higginson himself fell a victim to a hectic fever; in the hour of death, the future prosperity of New England, and the coming glories of its many churches, floated in cheering visions before his eyes. The Brownes, returning to England, breathed ineffectual menaces. The ships also carried with them a description of New England by Higginson-a tract of which three editions were published within a few months, so intense an interest in the new colony had been diffused throughout the realm. For the concession of the Massachusetts charter seemed to the Puritans like a summons from Heaven inviting them to America. There the gospel might be taught in its purity; and the works of nature would alone be the safe witnesses of their devotions. England, by her persecutions, proved herself weary of her inhabitants, who were esteemed more vile |
