The Beginners of a Nation Part 29

At Plymouth Williams spoke, as he had at Salem, without restraint from any motive of expediency or even of propriety. Separatist Plymouth, whose days of advance were over, was a little disturbed by his speech.

In his own sweet, reckless way he sometimes sharply rebuked even the revered Bradford when he thought him at fault. And in the interest of the aborigines and of justice Williams laid before Governor Bradford a ma.n.u.script treatise which argued that the king had no right to give away, as he had a.s.sumed to do in his grants and charters, the lands of the Indians merely because he was a Christian and they heathen. That it was right to wrong a man because he was not orthodox in belief could find no place in the thoughts of one whose conscience was wholly incapable of sophistication. Bradford accepted candidly the rebukes of Williams and loved him for his "many precious parts." But as governor of a feeble colony he was disturbed by Williams's course. In spirituality, unselfish fearlessness, and a bold pus.h.i.+ng of Separatist principles to their ultimate logical results, Roger Williams reminded the Pilgrims of the amiable pastor of the Separatist church in Amsterdam whose change step by step to "Anabaptism," the great bugbear of theology in that time, had been a tragedy and a scandal to the Separatists of Leyden. Elder Brewster feared that Williams would run the same course. Williams wished to return to Salem, where he might still devote himself to the neighboring Indians, and a.s.sist Skelton, now declining in health. Brewster persuaded the Plymouth church to give him a letter of dismissal. The leading Pilgrims felt bound to send "some caution" to the Salem church regarding the extreme tendencies of Williams. On the other hand, some of the Plymouth people were so captivated by his teachings and his personal character that they removed with him. This following of an approved minister was common among Puritans; an acceptable preacher was of as much value to a town as good meadows, broad pastures, and pure water.

V.

[Sidenote: The town system.]

[Sidenote: Note 6.]

To understand the brief career of Williams at Salem and its catastrophe, we must recall the character of colonial life in Ma.s.sachusetts at the time. There were already sixteen settlements or "towns" on the sh.o.r.es of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay, with an indefinite stretch of gloomy wilderness for background, the dwelling place of countless savages and wild beasts. The population of all the settlements may have summed up five thousand people--enough to have made one prosperous village. The inhabitants of the various towns of the bay were from different parts of England; their dress and dialect were diverse, and their Puritanism was of various complexions. The town system, at first a reproduction on new soil of the towns.h.i.+p field communes that had subsisted in parts of England from ages beyond the fountain heads of tradition, gave some play to local peculiarities and prejudices. There is evidence that the central government relieved itself from strain by means of this rural borough system. The ancient town system in turn appears to have taken on a new youth; it was perhaps modified and developed by the local diversity of the people, and it lent to Ma.s.sachusetts, at first, something of the elasticity of a federal government.

[Sidenote: Life in the Ma.s.sachusetts settlements.]

[Sidenote: 1630 to 1640.]

This community of scattered communes was cut off from frequent intercourse with the world, for the sea was far wider and more to be feared in that day of small s.h.i.+ps and imperfect navigation than it is now. The noise of the English controversies in which the settlers had once borne a part reached them at long intervals, like news from another planet. But most of the time these lonesome settlements had no interest greater than the petty news and gossip of little forest hamlets. The visitor who came afoot along Indian trails, or by water, paddling in a canoe, to Boston on lecture day, might bring some news of sickness, accident, or death. Sometimes the traveling story was exciting, as that wolves had slaughtered the cattle at a certain place, while yet cattle were few and precious. Or still more distressing intelligence came that the ruling elder of the church at Watertown had taken the High-church position that Roman churches were Christian churches, or that democratic views had been advanced by Eliot of Roxbury. A new and far-fetched prophetical explanation of a pa.s.sage in the Book of Canticles, and a tale of boatmen wrecked in some wintry tempest, might divide the attention of the people. Stories of boats capsized, of boatmen cast on islands where there was neither shelter nor food, of boats driven far to sea and heard of no more, were staples of excitement in these half-aquatic towns; and if the inmates of a doomed boat had been particularly profane, these events were accounted edifying--divine judgments on the unG.o.dly. When the governor wandered once and lost himself in the forest, pa.s.sing the night in a deserted wigwam, there was a sensation of a half-public character. That a snake and a mouse had engaged in a battle, and that the puny mouse had triumphed at last, was in one budget of traveling news that came to Boston. To this event an ominous significance was given by John Wilson, pastor of the Boston church, maker of anagrams, solemn utterer of rhyming prophecies which were sometimes fulfilled, and general theological putterer. Wilson made the snake represent the devil, according to all sound precedents; the mouse was the feeble church in the wilderness, to which G.o.d would give the victory over Satan. Thus enhanced by an instructive interpretation from the prophet and seer of the colony, the story no doubt took up its travels once more, and now with its hopeful exegesis on its back. The Ma.s.sachusetts mouse was an auspicious creature; it is recorded by the governor, and it was no doubt told along the coast, that one got into a library and committed depredations on a book of common prayer only, nibbling every leaf of the liturgy, while it reverently spared a Greek Testament and a Psalter in the same covers.

In a petty state with a range of intellectual interests so narrow, the conflict between Williams and the General Court took place.

VI.

[Sidenote: Self-consciousness of the Ma.s.sachusetts community.]

[Sidenote: Note 7.]

It was a community that believed in its own divine mission. It traced the existence of its settlements to the very hand of G.o.d--the G.o.d who led Israel out of Egypt. The New England colonists never forgot that they were a chosen people. Upon other American settlers--the Dutch in New Netherland, the Virginia churchmen, the newly landed Marylanders, with their admixture of papists--they looked with condescension if not with contempt, accounting them the Egyptians of the New World. The settlers on the Bay of Ma.s.sachusetts were certain that their providential exodus was one of the capital events in human history; that it had been predesigned from eternity to plant here, in a virgin world, the only true form of church government and to cherish a church that should be a model to the Old World in turn, and a kind of foreshadowing of the new heaven and the new earth. Some dreamed that the second coming of Christ would take place among the rocky woodlands of New England. The theocratical government was thought to be the one most pleasing to G.o.d, and a solemn obligation was felt to import into this new theocracy the harsh Oriental intolerance which had marked that fierce struggle in which the Jewish tribes finally shook off image wors.h.i.+p.

[Sidenote: John Cotton, 1633.]

[Sidenote: Note 8.]

The apostle of theocracy who arrived soon after Williams's return to Salem was John Cotton, a Puritan leader in England, in whom devoutness was combined with extreme discretion, a dominant will with a diplomatic prudence and a temper never ruffled. Cotton's ingenious refinements made him a valuable apologist in an age of polemics, but they often served to becloud his vision of truth and right. He was p.r.o.ne to see himself as he posed, in the character of a protagonist of truth. He gave wise advice to the Ma.s.sachusetts Puritans at their departure from England. When, a few years later, Laud's penetrating vigilance and relentless thoroughness made even Cotton's well-balanced course of mild non-conformity impossible, he fled from his parish of Boston, in Lincolns.h.i.+re, to London, and escaped in 1633 with difficulty to the new Boston in New England. As John Cotton had been the s.h.i.+ning candle of Puritanism in England, his arrival in America was hailed with joy, and from the time of his settlement in the little capital his was the hand that shaped ecclesiastical inst.i.tutions in New England, and he did much also to mold the yet plastic state. Though he usually avoided the appearance of personal antagonism, every formidable rival he had left Ma.s.sachusetts early. Williams, Hooker, Davenport, and Hugh Peter all found homes beyond the bounds of the colony. There can not be two queen bees in one hive, nor can there well be more than one master mind in the ecclesiastical order of a petty theocratic state. It was the paradox of colonial religious organization that the Episcopal colonies had parishes almost independent of all supervision, while the New England Congregationalists were, from the arrival of Cotton, subject to the dominance of ministers who virtually attained to the authority of bishops.

VII.

[Sidenote: Salem refractory.]

Salem, the oldest town of the commonwealth, was the most ready to pursue an independent course and it was attached to Williams, whose ability attracted new settlers and who maintained a position of independence toward Cotton and the authorities at Boston. To subdue the refractory Salem was no doubt one of the secondary purposes of the proceedings against Williams. There seems to have been no personal animosity toward Williams himself; his amiable character and his never-doubted sincerity were main obstacles to his punishment.

[Sidenote: Collision inevitable.]

The return of Roger Williams to such a place as Salem was naturally a matter of alarm to the ministers and magistrates of Ma.s.sachusetts.

Collision was not a matter of choice on either side. The catastrophe was like one that comes from the irresistible action of physical forces. In a colony planted at great cost to maintain one chosen form of wors.h.i.+p and subordinating all the powers of government to this purpose, a preacher who a.s.serted the necessity for a complete separation of religion and government in the interest of soul liberty had no place. His ideal was higher than the prevailing one, but that age could not possibly rise to it.

VIII.

[Sidenote: The book against the patent.]

[Sidenote: Note 9.]

[Sidenote: Reply to Cotton, 276, 277.]

Williams was yet only a private member of the church in Salem, but in the illness of the pastor he "exercised by way of prophecy"--that is, preached without holding office. An alarming report was soon in circulation that he had written a book against the king's patent, the foundation of the colonial authority. This treatise, we have said, was written in Plymouth for the benefit of Governor Bradford. Like many of the ma.n.u.script books that have come down to us, it appears to have been a small quarto, and, if it resembled other books of the sort, it was neatly st.i.tched and perhaps even bound by its author in the favorite pigskin of the time. Williams sent his book promptly to be examined. Some of the "most judicious ministers much condemned Mr.

Williams's error and presumption," and an order was made that he "should be convented at the next court." In the charges no fault was found with the main thesis of the book, that the king could not claim and give away the lands of the Indians; but it was thought that there were disloyal reflections cast upon both James and Charles--at least those eager to condemn construed the obscure and "implicative phrases"

of Williams in that sense--and these supposed reflections were the subject of the charges. Williams wrote a submissive letter, and offered his book, or any part of it, to be burned after the manner of that time. A month later, when the governor and council met, the whole aspect of the affair had changed. Cotton and Wilson, the teacher and the pastor of the Boston church, certified, after examination of Williams's quarto, that "they found the matters not so evil as at first they seemed." It was decided to let Williams off easily. There are some things unexplained about the affair; the eagerness of the "judicious ministers" and court to condemn without due examination, the failure even to specify the objectionable pa.s.sages at last, and the unwonted docility of Williams--all leave one to infer that there was more in this transaction than appears. Laud and his a.s.sociates were moving to have the Ma.s.sachusetts charter vacated, and it may have seemed imprudent for the magistrates to found their authority on a base so liable to disappear. If the charter had been successfully called in, Williams's ground of the sufficiency of the Indian t.i.tle to lands might have proved useful as a last resort. Williams a.s.serted, long afterward, that before his troubles began he had drafted a letter addressed to the king, "not without the approbation of some of the chiefs of New England," whose consciences were also "tender on this point before G.o.d." This letter humbly acknowledged "the evil of that part of the patent which relates" to the gift of lands. Had the letter been sent to its destination it would have cut a curious figure among the worldly-minded state papers of the time.

[Sidenote: An abstract principle.]

It is probable that most of the land of the colony had been secured from the natives by purchase or by treaty of some sort; at least the Indians were content, and the little quarto had at that time no practical bearing whatever, but that did not matter to Williams. The more abstract a question of right and wrong, the more he relished a discussion of it. It was of a piece with his exquisite Separatism, a mere standing up in the face of heaven and earth for an abstract principle. His purpose was not to right a specific and concrete wrong, for there had been none, but to a.s.sert as a broad principle of everlasting application that a Christian king may not dispose of the land owned by heathens merely because of his Christianity. Williams was not a judge or a lawgiver; he was a poet in morals, enamored of perfection, and keeping his conscience purer than Galahad's.

IX.

[Sidenote: The alarm.]

[Sidenote: 1634.]

It was in the winter of 1633-'34 that the book about the patent was called in question. Skelton, pastor of Salem, died in the following August, and the Salem people, in spite of an injunction from the magistrates, made Williams their teacher in his stead. The country was now full of alarm at news from England that the charter was to be revoked, that a general governor of New England was to be appointed, and that a force was to be sent to support his authority. Laud was put at the head of a commission for the government of the colonies in April, 1634. There could be no doubt of the meaning of this measure.

For more than a year the alarm in Ma.s.sachusetts continued. The ministers were consulted regarding the lawfulness of resistance to force. A platform was constructed on the northeast side of Castle Island, and a fortified house was proposed to defend the platform. The trainbands were drilled, muskets, "bandeleroes" or cartridge belts, and rests were distributed to the several towns, and pikemen were required to learn to use the c.u.mbrous musket of the time. Puritans in England, angry that Laud, the new archbishop and old persecutor, should stretch a long arm to America, sent powder and cannon to their co-religionists, the object of whose military vigilance could easily be covered by dangers from the savages, from the French, or from the Spaniards.

[Sidenote: Debates not appeased.]

But these a.s.siduous preparations, under the supervision of a military commission which had "power of life and limb," did not abate in the least the discussion of questions of doctrine and casuistry.

Refinements of theology were quite as real and substantial to the Puritan mind as trainbands and fortifications. Sound doctrine and a scrupulous observance of the "ordinances" conciliated G.o.d; they were indeed more important elements of public safety than drakes and demi-culverins.

[Sidenote: Reform in dress.]

[Sidenote: Ma.s.s. Records, 3d September, 1634.]

[Sidenote: Compare Ward's Simple Cobbler, _pa.s.sim_.]

The General Court of September, 1634, undertook to provide for the public safety in both respects. Along with regulations and provisions of a military nature, it set out to remove those flagrant sins that had provoked the divine wrath. The wearing of silver, gold, and rich laces, girdles, and hatbands was forbidden; slashed clothes were also abolished, "other than one slash in each sleeve and another in the back"; ruffs and beaver hats, which last were apparently a mark of dudishness, were not to be allowed. Long hair and other fas.h.i.+ons "prejudicial to the general good" were done away with in this hour of penitence. Men and women might wear out the clothes they had, except their "immoderate great sleeves, slashed apparel, immoderate great rayles, long wings," which were to go at once without reprieve or ceremony. The use of tobacco, socially and in public, or before strangers was made an offense. If taken secretly or medicinally, the Court did not take cognizance of it.

X.

[Sidenote: The fast-day sermon.]

[Sidenote: 1634.]

Seeing that the millinery sins recounted in this act had cried to Heaven, and that, beside the danger from England, there was the desire of Hooker's party to remove to the Connecticut, and a dissension concerning the power of the Upper House that threatened trouble, the Court appointed the 18th of September a solemn fast-day, hoping by repentance, prayer, and the penance of hunger to avert the manifold disasters that threatened them. Roger Williams was sure to speak like a prophet on such an occasion. He did not stop at slashed garments, great sleeves, and headdresses with long wings; he preached on eleven "public sins" that had provoked divine wrath. We have no catalogue left us. The list may have included some of those amusing scruples that he held in common with other Puritans, or some of those equally trivial personal scruples that Williams cherished so fondly. But no sermon of his on public sins could fail to contain a declaration of his far-reaching and cherished principle of religious freedom, including perhaps a round denunciation of the petty inquisition into private opinion which had been set up in Ma.s.sachusetts. The Sabbath law, the law obliging men to pay a tax to support religious wors.h.i.+p, the requirement that all should attend religious wors.h.i.+p under penalty, and the enforcement of a religious oath on irreligious and perhaps unwilling residents, the a.s.sumption of the magistrate to regulate the orthodoxy of a church under the advice of the ministers, were points of Ma.s.sachusetts law and administration that he denounced at various times; and some of them, if not all, were no doubt put in pillory in this fast-day sermon in the early autumn of 1634. Judged by modern standards, the sermon may have had absurdities enough, but it was no doubt a long way in advance of the General Court's mewling about lace, and slashes, and long hair, and other customs "prejudicial to the general good." To this sermon, whatever it was, Williams afterward attributed the beginning of the troubles that led to his banishment.

XI.