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1640.

1642.

year to year.1 General Courts were at first ordered to be holden in every March and October, alternating, as to place, between Newport and Ports- Aug. 6. mouth.2 After two years' trial, one General Court in each year was thought sufficient. It March. was "ordered, and unanimously agreed upon," as follows: "That the government which this body politic doth attend unto, in this island and the jurisdiction thereof, in favor of our prince, is a democracy, or popular government; that is to say, it is in the power of the freemen orderly assembled, or the major part of them, to make or constitute just laws by which they will be regulated, and to depute from among themselves such ministers as shall see them faithfully executed between man and man." "4

1641.

5

The early laws for the most part related to matters of police, to the extirpation of noxious wild animals, and to military preparations for defence against the Indians. It was ordered that the Colony seal should be "a sheaf of arrows bound up, and in the liess or bond this motto indented: Amor vincet omnia." The provision for liberty of conscience was, "that none be accounted a delinquent for doctrine, provided it be not directly repugnant to the government or laws established."" After the Long Parliament met, the loyalty of the Colony expressed itself less explicitly than it had before done, in the order "that, if any person or persons on this island, whether freeman or inhabitant, shall by any means, open or covert, endeavor to bring in any other

Sept. 17.

1 R. I. Col. Rec., I. 101, 112, 120, among Christians." The removal of 126, 127.

2. Ibid., 106.

3 Ibid., 123.

4 Ibid., 112.

5 Yet Winthrop heard (II. 46) that "divers of them. ... . would not wear any arms, and denied all magistracy

Coddington and his friends to the south-
ern end of the island had brought them
into close proximity to the Narragan-
setts, whose dispositions they watched
with solicitude.

6 R. I. Col. Rec., I. 115,
7. Ibid., 113.

1642.

1

power than what is now established, (except it be from our prince by lawful commission,) he shall be accounted a delinquent under the head of perjury." By the end of another year, the hope that the time had come Sept. 19. for obtaining Transatlantic protection for the infant settlement had revived,2 and led to an order for the appointment of a committee "to consult about the procuration of a patent for this island and islands and the land adjacent, and to draw up petition or petitions, and to send letter or letters for the same end to Sir Henry Vane." 3

The planters at Providence entertained the same design. They too felt strongly the desirableness of a recognition in England, on account of their want of any title to their lands except what was derived from the natives, their dissensions among themselves, their isolation from the more flourishing colonies around them, and the distrust with which they felt themselves to be regarded by their compatriots in America. The character of Roger Williams, no less than his personal relations to Henry Vane, recommended him for employment in the service proposed; and he embarked for England, sailing from New Amsterdam because still under the sentence of banishment from Massachusetts. While awaiting the departure of the vessel that was to convey him, he is said to have found occasion for his distinctive office as a peacemaker with the Indians, and to have had the happiness to allay their fury against the Dutch settlers in that region. He employed the leisure of his outward voyage in writing his "Key into the Language

1643.

4

1 R. I. Col. Rec., I. 118. I am not sure that this was not a measure of precaution against apprehended encroachment from Massachusetts.

2 See above, p. 514.

3 R. I. Col. Rec., I. 125.

by the mediation of Mr. Williams, who was then there to go in a Dutch ship for England, were pacified, and peace re-established between the Dutch and them." Williams, however, referring, in a Memorial to the General Court of

4 Winthrop says (II. 97): "These, Massachusetts, October 5, 1654, to this

Roger Wil

England.

of America." In England, whither he came just after the death of Hampden, he was well received in the high quarters to which his mission direct- liams in ed him, and was for a time the guest of Henry Vane. Here he immediately published his "Key," and his treatise entitled "Mr. Cotton's Letter, lately printed, examined and answered." The views respecting freedom of conscience, which he so prized, now fell in with the current of thought in the elevated circles in which he moved,1 and were sure of favorable attention; and his first publications were followed in the next year by that of his "Bloody Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience." 2

visit of his to New Amsterdam, speaks of the war with the Indians as going on when he sailed from that port, and says nothing of any mediation of his to arrest it. (R. I. Hist. Col., III. 155.) At all events, the strife was not composed; for in September, 1643, some six months after Williams's departure, Mrs. Hutchinson, in an inroad of the Indians into the Dutch country, lost her life. With her they murdered all of her household, except a daughter eight years of age, whom they carried into captivity. The General Court of Massachusetts took measures to recover the child, (Mass. Col. Rec., II. 52,) who, after four years, was obtained from the Indians by the Dutch, and restored to her friends in Boston. (Winthrop, II. 267.)

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CHAPTER XV.

MASSACHUSETTS was settling steadily on her well-laid foundations. The great decline in the value of property, incident to the discontinuance of immigration, bore heavily upon her people; but the habit of hard work and careful saving, which necessity had enforced in the earlier stages of the settlement, enabled them to live above want, while it sowed the seeds of a future affluence. And the lull, which succeeded to the storm of controversy lately so furious, was favorable to the dispassionate determination of the important practical questions which were constantly arising in the infancy of the state. It may even be thought, that the arrest of the increase of the colony by accessions from abroad was at this stage happily ordained to facilitate an orderly arrangement of its elements, already sufficient as they were, both in amount and variety, for the composition of a vigorous body politic.

In Dudley's second administration of the chief magistracy,1 the scarcity of money was such as to lead to a law authorizing the satisfaction of debts by pay

Relief law in Massachusetts.

1640.

ment "in corn, cattle, fish, or other commodities, at such rates as the Court should set down Oct. 7. from time to time, or, in default thereof, by appraisement of indifferent men." The law was not to have effect as to debts existing at the time of its passage, or contracted within the next three weeks. But, so restricted, it was not thought to afford sufficient relief; and, by a further provision, creditors were com2 Mass. Col. Rec., I. 304.

1 See above, p. 554.

2

pelled to accept payment of all dues in personal property of the debtors, such as they should themselves select; and, if this should prove insufficient, then in real estate, at a valuation to be determined "by three understanding and indifferent men."1

2

Govern

1641-1642.

At the expiration of Dudley's year of office, Richard Bellingham was chosen his successor, with Endicott for Deputy-Governor, and a Board of Assistants composed of the other magistrates of the last year. The 3 election of Bellingham, which was made by a ment of majority of only six votes when there were some fourteen hundred voters, took the General Court by surprise, and was received by them with a displeasure which they testified significantly and without delay. The government was no sooner sworn in, than they passed a vote to repeal "the order formerly made for allowing a hundred pound per annum to the Governor."4 This period of Bellingham's life was not the most creditable. He occasioned scandal by an unsuitable matrimonial contract, by neglecting to have it published according to law, and by performing the marriage ceremony himself; and, when called to account before the Board of Magistrates, he indulged himself in disrespectful and disorderly behavior.5 The General Court "was full of un- Unsatisfaccomfortable agitations and contentions," by rea- istration of son of his unfriendliness to "some other of the Bellingham. magistrates." "He set himself in an opposite frame to them in all proceedings, which did much retard all business, and was occasion of grief to many godly minds,

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election, Winthrop wrote, in the margin of his manuscript, "Mr. B. chosen unduly.” "There had been much laboring," he says, "to have Mr. Bellingham chosen"; and some persons, he thought, were improperly denied the privilege of voting, because of alleged informality.

5 Winthrop, II. 43.

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