1626. March 29. ment of handicraftsmen by "any strangers or foreigners till such time as the necessity of the Colony be served," of the exportation of timber, corn, beans, or pease "without the leave and license of the Governor and Council," and of the covering of dwelling-houses "with any kind of thatch"; with January 3. some arrangements respecting the division of lands and the accompanying rights of way, and respecting the gathering of fuel, fishing, hunting, and fowling. 1628. 1633. Jan. 1. In the thirteenth year of the settlement, a penal provision had to be adopted to protect the public weal against the prevailing absence of ambition for public office; and "it was enacted, by public consent of the freemen of this society of New Plymouth, that if now or hereafter any were elected to the office of Governor and would not stand to the election, nor hold and execute the office for his year, that then he be amerced in twenty pounds sterling fine; and, in case refused to be paid upon the lawful demand of the ensuing Governor, then to be levied out of the goods or chattels of the said person so refusing. It was further ordered and decreed, that if any were elected to the office of council and refused to hold the place, that then he be amerced in ten pounds sterling fine, and in case refused to be paid, to be forthwith levied. It was further decreed and enacted, that in case one and the same person should be elected Governor a second year, having held the place the foregoing year, it should be lawful for him to refuse without any amercement; and the company to proceed to a new election, except they can prevail with him by entreaty. At his urgent request, Bradford was now for the first time excused from the office of Governor, and Edward Winslow, who some months before had returned from his second visit to England, was chosen his successor, Bradford taking his place as one of the Assistants. 1 Plymouth Colony Records, I. 5. 1632. June 5. 1633. Their number was at the same time raised from five to seven, and so remained during the separate existence of the Colony. At the end of Winslow's year of service as chief magistrate, Thomas Prince was made Governor. Perhaps Winslow pleaded the privilege of exemption allowed to him by the recent statute; perhaps the visit to England, which, in the public service, he made in the following year, was already contemplated. It had been "by full consent agreed and enacted, that the chief government be upon Oct. 28. tied to the town of Plymouth, and that the Governor for the time being be tied there to keep his residence and dwelling, and there also to hold such courts as concern the whole." 1 The elections were made, as they had been heretofore, in the first week of January; but at the election of Prince it was ordered, that "the Governor Jan. 1. and other officers . . . should not enter upon their offices till the twenty-seventh of March,” and that the political year thenceforward should begin on that day." 1634. There is no original public register of Plymouth Colony of an earlier date than its seventh year, at which time Governor Bradford made a record of some of the principal transactions. The minutes of the Court at which Winslow was first made Governor begin a journal which, under the name of Court Orders, exhibits thenceforward the miscellaneous proceedings both of the General Courts, consisting of the body of freemen, and of the Courts of Assistants, in the threefold character corresponding to their legislative, judicial, and executive functions. The General Courts conferred the franchise, and appointed not only the magistrates, but also inferior officers, such as constables and assessors; but, with these exceptions, the courts of both kinds appear to have exercised generally the same 1 It was at this time that so much fear was entertained of a dispersion from Plymouth (see above, p. 336). There may have been a special reason for the law, if it was already expected that the next choice of Governor would fall on Prince, since in fact he subsequently removed to Duxbury, and afterwards to Eastham. 2 Plym. Col. Rec., I. 21. powers, according as a meeting of the one or the other occurred most seasonably in reference to the business to be disposed of. By registration in their own Journal, they recognized marriages, and other private contracts, as of sale,1 hire, labor, and the like. With the help of a jury, they heard and determined disputes about property, claims for service and for wages, complaints of assault, and all the miscellaneous controversies which social life creates. They apprenticed orphans, and enforced the good treatment of apprentices and other servants. They punished slanderers, runaways, libertines, drunkards, and disturbers of the peace, by fines and whipping. They assigned lands for cultivation and for permanent possession, and apportioned from year to year the common meadow grounds for mowing. They superintended the probate of wills and administration on estates. They took order for the building and maintenance of fences and highways. They regulated commerce by restrictions upon the export of necessary articles. They made rules for the alewife and herring fishery, and for hunting and fowling. They prescribed bounties for the destruction of hurtful animals, and defined damages for trespasses by cattle, and for injury by fires. They provided for the sealing of the measures used in trade. They established the pay of jurors, and restricted entertainment in public houses. And they gave diligent heed to arrangements for the military defence of the Colony.2 1 One of the minutes is curious, as indicating the value of real estate at Plymouth in the second decade: "1633, Oct. 7. Richard Higgins hath bought of Thomas Little his now [present] dwelling-house and misted [homestead?], for and in consideration of twenty-one bushels of merchantable corn, whereof twelve bushels to be paid in hand, and the remainder at harvest next ensuing." (Plym. Col. Rec., I. 16; comp. 33.) 2 "Whereas our ancient work of fortification by continuance of time is decayed, and Christian wisdom teacheth us to depend upon God in the use of all good means for our safety, it is further agreed by the Court aforesaid, that a work of fortification be made. . . . by the whole strength of men able to labor in the Colony." (Plym. Col. Rec., I. 6.) At the same Court (January 1, 1633), it was "further ordered, that every free 1633. 1 At the time of Prince's accession, a colonial tax of fifty-eight pounds and seventeen shillings was assessed on Taxation at seventy-seven men and four women. This fact Plymouth. will not warrant any precise inference respecting the amount of the adult male population, inasmuch as there can be no doubt that there were servants and others who were exempt, and, indeed, names of men occur in the Court-Orders which do not appear on the tax-list. The list of the next preceding year, the earliest which is extant, contains the names of eighty-six men and three women.2 When the Court-Orders registry was begun, the freemen were sixty-eight in number.3 While Plymouth was advancing in its slow and quiet growth, the younger but more robust Massachusetts settlement was engaged with high questions of policy. The charter of the Massachusetts Company had prescribed no condition of investment with its franchise, -or with what under the circumstances which had arisen was the same thing, the prerogatives of citizenship in the plantation, except the will and vote of those who were already free1631 men. At the first Cisatlantic General Court for election, "to the end the body of the commons May 18. man or other inhabitant of this Colony provide for himself, and each under him able to bear arms, a sufficient musket and other serviceable piece for war, with bandeleroes, and other appurtenance, with what speed may be; and that, for each able person aforesaid, he be at all times..... furnished with two pounds of powder, and ten pounds of bullet." 1 Plym. Col. Rec., I. 27-29.—The lowest rate, nine shillings, was that of forty-five persons, including the four women, who were all widows. The largest sum (£2.5) was assessed on Edward Winslow and on William Collier; the next largest (£1.16), on Isaac Allerton, who, the year before, had been assessed £ 3. 11. Stephen Hopkins paid £1.10. Bradford, Brewster, and five others 2 Plym. Col. Rec., I. 9-11. Religious may be preserved of honest and good men," it was "ordered and agreed, that, for the time to come, no man shall be admitted to the freedom of this test for the body politic, but such as are members of some of the churches within the limits of the same." 1 franchise. The men who laid this singular foundation for the commonwealth which they were instituting, had been accustomed to feel responsibility, and to act upon wellconsidered reasons. By charter from the English crown, the land was theirs as against all other civilized people, and they had a right to choose according to their own rules the associates who should help them to occupy and govern it. Exercising this right, they determined that magistracy and citizenship should belong only to Christian men, ascertained to be such by the best test which they knew how to apply. They established a kind of aristocracy hitherto unknown. Not birth, nor wealth, nor learning, nor skill in war, was to confer political power; but personal character,-goodness of the highest type, -goodness of that purity and force which only the faith of Jesus Christ is competent to create. The conception, if a delusive and impracticable, was a noble one. Nothing better can be imagined for the welfare of a country than that it shall be ruled on Christian principles; in other words, that its rulers shall be Christian men, — men of disinterestedness and integrity of the choicest quality that the world knows, men whose fear of God exalts them above every other fear, and whose controlling love of God and of man consecrates them to the most generous aims. The conclusive objection to the 1 Mass. Col. Rec., I. 87. 2 None are so fit to be trusted with the liberties of the commonwealth as church-members; for the liberties of the freemen of this commonwealth are such as require men of faithful integrity to God and the state, to preserve the same. Their liberties, among others, are chiefly these: 1. To choose all magistrates, and to call them to account at the General Courts; 2. To choose such burgesses, every General Court, as, with the magistrates, shall make or repeal all laws. Now both these liber |