The Beginners of a Nation Part 23

[Sidenote: Note 8, page 210.]

It has been maintained by several writers that the charter had been worded with a view to removal. See, for example, Palfrey's New England, i, 307. But a paper read before the Ma.s.sachusetts Historical Society, and printed in the Proceedings for December, 1869, by the late Charles Deane, shows that such a presumption is groundless. In calling the subordinate government of Endecott "London's Plantation in Ma.s.sachusetts Bay in New England," the company showed that it proposed to keep its headquarters in London. It is open to question, however, whether Deane does not go too far in denying that the charter gave authority for the transfer. In that technical age the letter of the instrument would probably be counted more conclusive than at present, and the evidence of the dockets would have less weight. The removal of the government was not one of the charges made in the _quo warranto_ proceedings against the company. On the main question compare also the very significant treatment of the subject by Winthrop in his paper on Arbitrary Government, Life and Letters, ii, 443, where he expressly says that it was intended to have the chief government in England, "and with much difficulty we gott it abscinded." It is to be remembered that the exercise of governmental functions by a commercial corporation was not a novel spectacle in that age. In 1620 the English and Dutch East India Companies, after having been at war while the two nations were allies, concluded a treaty of peace. No doubt the exercise of such powers by trading companies had been made familiar by the mingling of the functions of government with those of commerce by the merchants of the Hanse cities. The East India and the Hudson Bay Companies continued to exercise territorial jurisdiction until a very recent period.

[Sidenote: Note 9, page 214.]

This rebound from their previous att.i.tude of compromise is well exemplified in the church covenant adopted at Dorchester, Ma.s.s., in 1636, under the lead of Richard Mather, which contains these words: "We do likewise promise by his Grace a.s.sisting us, to endeavour the establis.h.i.+ng amongst ourselves all His Holy Ordinances which He hath appointed for His church here on Earth, ... opposing to the utmost of our power whatsoever is contrary thereto and bewailing from our Hearts our own neglect hereof in former times and our poluting ourselves therein with any Sinful Invention of men." Blake's Annals of Dorchester. Robinson of Leyden, in his Justification of Separation, 1610, declared that the Puritans would soon separate if they might have the magistrates' license; and Backus, who quotes the pa.s.sage (i, pp. 2, 3), remarks on the confirmation which the history of Ma.s.sachusetts gives to Robinson's theory of conformity.

[Sidenote: Note 10, page 215.]

In his Way of the Churches Cleared, controversial necessity drove Cotton to a.s.sert that Plymouth had small share in fixing the ecclesiastical order of Ma.s.sachusetts, but he is compelled to admit its influence. "And though it bee," he says, "very likely, that some of the first commers might helpe their Theory by hearing and discerning their practice at Plymmouth: yet therein the Scripture is fulfilled, 'The Kingdome of Heaven is like unto leaven,'" etc., pp, 16, 17.

BOOK III.

CENTRIFUGAL FORCES IN COLONY-PLANTING.

CHAPTER THE FIRST.

_THE CATHOLIC MIGRATION._

I.

[Sidenote: Centrifugal forces.]

At every new stage in the history of the American settlement, we are afresh reminded that colonies are planted by the uneasy. The discontent that comes from poverty and financial reverse, that which is born of political unrest, and that which has no other cause than feverish thirst for novelty and hazardous adventure, had each a share in impelling Englishmen to emigrate. But in the seventeenth century religion was the dominant concern--one might almost say the dominant pa.s.sion--of the English race, and it supplied much the most efficient motive to colonization. Not only did it propel men to America, but it acted as a distributing force on this side of the sea, producing secondary colonies by expelling from a new plantation the discontented and the persecuted to make fresh breaks in the wilderness for new settlements. Connecticut and Rhode Island were secondary plantings of this kind. Religious differences also made twain the Chesapeake region, the first home of the English in America, one of the two rival colonies being intolerantly Protestant, the other a home for Catholic refugees.

II.

[Sidenote: Character of George Calvert.]

George Calvert, the first Baron Baltimore, who projected the Maryland colony and left it to his son to carry forward, belonged to the order of men who are shrewd without being creative--men of sagacity as differentiated from men of ideas. The man in whose mind there is a ferment of original ideas has theories to promulgate or expound.

Sagacity has small necessity for speech--its very reticence gives an advantage in the conduct of affairs. The parliamentary antagonist and political rival who confronted Calvert was no other than our old acquaintance Sir Edwin Sandys, of the Virginia Company. Calvert and Sandys were alike men of rare accomplishments, and both were interested in schemes for colonization; otherwise they were antipodal.

Sandys was a statesman of advanced ideas, creative, liberal, and original, fitted to be the founder of representative government in the English colonies. In that age of worn and brittle inst.i.tutions it was not deemed wholly safe to suffer so robust a thinker as Sandys to be always at large, and it was one of Calvert's most difficult duties, as the king's secretary and chosen intermediary, to explain to Parliament why its leader was under restraint. Sandys, as we have already said, was described as "right-handed to every great employment"; when Calvert came upon the scene, he was aptly characterized as "a forward and knowing person in matters relating to the state." The phrase denotes, perhaps, clever adroitness within the limits of that mediocrity which in those perilous times was a safeguard to the man who ventured into politics. After having started well at court, Sandys had fallen into irretrievable disfavor by his resolute advocacy of the liberties of his countrymen. The message to the Virginia Company, already recited, "Choose the devil, but not Sir Edwin Sandys,"

expressed the depth of the king's antipathy. But if Sandys seemed to the king a devil, Calvert became for him a convenient angel. Notions about human rights and the liberty of Parliament did not obstruct Calvert's career. Not that he was a man to prove unfaithful to his convictions, as did his bosom friend Wentworth, or to suppress liberal opinions in order to smooth an ascending pathway, as did his great contemporary Bacon. Calvert played a far simpler part and one less dishonorable. It was his fortune to be a man of facile mind, naturally reverential toward authority. The principles enunciated by his sovereign and the measures by which those in power sought to attain the end in view were pretty sure to seem laudable or at least excusable to him. Such a mind can not be called scrupulous, neither is it consciously dishonest. The quality most highly esteemed at the court of James was fidelity, unswerving devotion to the interests of the king and of one's friends. And this, the dominant virtue of his time and of his cla.s.s--this honor of a courtier--Calvert possessed in a high degree; it is a standard by which he has a right to be judged.

To a French amba.s.sador he seemed an honorable, sensible, courteous, well-intentioned man, devoted to the interests of England, but without consideration or influence.

[Sidenote: Calvert's rise.]

[Sidenote: Note 1.]

[Sidenote: Note 2.]

Whatever his lack of influence in councils of state, Calvert's fidelity, useful abilities, and many accomplishments won the friends.h.i.+p of James, and in that lavish reign when all the fairy stories came true at a court which was "like a romance of knight errantry," as the Spanish minister declared, the favor of the king was sure to result in good fortune to the favorite. From being secretary to Burleigh, Calvert rose to be princ.i.p.al Secretary of State, was knighted, and at last enn.o.bled. Grants of estates in Ireland and of great unexplored tracts of territory in the wilderness of America, pensions, sinecure offices, grants of money out of increased customs fees, and presents from those who had ends to serve at court, were the means by which a successful courtier bettered his estate, and by some or all of these Secretary Calvert thrived. That he did thrive is proved by the great sum he was able to lose in his futile attempt to plant a colony in Newfoundland. It was believed that he had accepted a share of the money dispensed lavishly in presents and pensions to English courtiers by Spain, but this Calvert denied, and one can believe that a man of his fidelity to king and country would be able to resist a temptation to which others succ.u.mbed.

III.

[Sidenote: The colony of Avalon.]

[Sidenote: Cal S. P. America, pp. 25, 26, March 16, 1620.]

[Sidenote: Note 3.]

Calvert was very early interested in colonization. He was a member of the Virginia Company in 1609, and later one of the councilors for New England. In 1620 he was one of a commission appointed to settle the affairs of a Scotch company for colonizing Newfoundland, and in the next year he dispatched his first colony to the southeastern peninsula of that island which he had bought from Sir William Vaughan. In this latter year (1621) he secured a grant of the whole vast island, but in 1622 he accepted a re-grant of the peninsula alone, and this became his first proprietary colony. Captain Whitbourne's pamphlet on Newfoundland was just then circulating gratuitously by the aid of collections made in the churches with the sanction of royal authority.

It described a Newfoundland of Edenic fruitfulness. Even cool-headed statesmen like Calvert appear to have been captivated by the stories of this veteran seaman and weather-beaten romancer. Calvert called his new province Avalon. The name signifies the land of apples--that is, the fruitful country. In old British mythology it was the paradise of the blessed, the island in the western seas to which King Arthur was translated in the famous legend. This name of promise suited the situation of the new island state, and fitted well the enthusiastic tales of Whitbourne and the groundless hopes of Calvert. The bleak Newfoundland coast had already blossomed with fanciful names; there was the Bay of Plesaunce and the Bay of Flowers, Robin Hood's Bay and the River of Bonaventure; there was the Harbor of Formosa and the Harbor of Heartsease. Avalon, the earthly paradise, was but the complement of these.

IV.

[Sidenote: The charter of Avalon.]

[Sidenote: Note 4.]

[Sidenote: Note 5.]

Sir George Calvert probably drafted with his own hand--the hand of an expert and accomplished man of the court--the charter of April 7, 1623, that conferred on him an authority little short of sovereignty over his new territory. This masterpiece of dexterous charter-making afforded a model for other proprietary charters, and Calvert himself bettered it but little in the Maryland charter of a later date. The ambiguous pa.s.sages in the Maryland charter, which have been accounted evidence of a design to make way for the toleration or even the possible dominance of Roman Catholicism, appear already in the charter of Avalon. Was the colony of 1621 or its charter of 1623 intended to supply a refuge, if one should be needed, for Englishmen of the Catholic faith? The question is not easily answered. The primary design of the Avalon colony was, no doubt, to better the fortunes of Sir George Calvert and to lift him and his successors into the authority and dignity of counts-palatine in the New World. But there can hardly be a doubt that, before the charter of 1623 was granted, Secretary Calvert was already a Catholic, secretly or latently, if not overtly. His charter of Avalon naturally left open a door for the toleration of the faith to which he was already attached, or toward which he was tending.

V.

[Sidenote: Calvert's conversion.]

Calvert's conversion was almost inevitable. He favored the project for the Spanish match, and he was, like some other courtiers, under the influence of Gondomar, a consummate master of intrigue. He was bound by ties of friends.h.i.+p, and later by the marriage of his son, to Lord Arundel of Wardour, a Catholic, and the const.i.tution of his mind and all the habits of a lifetime made him a lover of authority in church and state. Under favoring circ.u.mstances such a man becomes a Roman Catholic by gravitation and natural affinity.

[Sidenote: Pet.i.tion in Rushworth, Part I, i, 141. Compare Neal, Part II, c. ii.]

There was a Catholic revival in England at this time, especially among the courtiers and upper cla.s.ses. In 1623 there was a large influx to England of priests and Jesuits. English Romanists flocked to the vicinage of London, and resorted in great numbers to the ma.s.s in the houses of foreign amba.s.sadors; and in many English country houses the ma.s.s was openly celebrated in defiance of law. The Commons, in alarm, adopted what James fitly called "a stinging pet.i.tion against the papists."

VI.

[Sidenote: His resignation.]

[Sidenote: 1624.]

[Sidenote: 1625.]

[Sidenote: Note 6.]