The distinction, which, if of no great significance, was real, was convenient for the purpose of the hour. But the reader of the present day may doubt whether the true reason of the different methods of proceeding in the two cases is not to be found in the agitation of the weighty questions which lay at the basis of both. Already, on the earlier occasion, men of influence had held that there must be no naval operations in Boston harbor; that the local authority there was permanent and paramount; "that a commission could not supersede a patent." The discussion of such doctrines, in the exist ing state of the public mind, and with the short history of the past for an impulse onward, could only have one issue. They could not fail to make their way. Events had brought Massachusetts into such a position as to preclude a positive disavowal by her of supreme authority within her own domain. For once, what with the novelty of the occasion and the universal sympathy felt with the Parliament, the claim of its officer might be yielded. But the surrender would be followed by reflection and misgivings. Its incompatibility with a safe hold upon self-government would be apparent; and its repetition would be impossible, whether a circumstantial difference between the cases which arose might, or might not, enable a subtile casuistry to justify the consistency of different proceedings in the one case and the other. CHAPTER IV. THUS early were the rights of Englishmen in New England asserted against an officer of the new government which had been set up in the home of their fathers. The Puritan people of the confederate Colonies could not but rejoice in the successful resistance to absolutism; but they did not presume that all need of watchfulness for the security of their own freedom had passed away. In the judgment of the statesmen of Massachusetts, the Ordinance by which Parliament had created a Commission for the Colonies, was, in respect to them, as truly a usurpation, if not so immediately dangerous, as the previous institution of a similar authority by the King. As time passed on, the necessity for caution was further revealed. In ecclesiastical affairs, the Puritans in New England were no more disposed to come under the control of presbyteries, than under the rule of bishops; but in England, after the tyranny of the Episcopal hierarchy had been overthrown, it became probable that a Presbyterian hierarchy, not less exclusive, perhaps eventually not less cruel, would succeed to its place. churches. It has been pointed out, that the great emigration to Massachusetts in the sixth year of King Charles is to be traced not so much to the Separatists as to the IndepenNon-conformists. Arrived, however, at their new dence of home, the emigrants made haste to prove that they had left behind them their attachment to a national church, whether that should turn out to be Episcopal or Presbyterian. They even rejected the principle of con 1 See Vol. I. 633. solidation altogether, and established their religious congregations on a basis of mutual independence. Meanwhile, among their friends in England, there was a prevailing disposition to substitute Presbytery for the government by bishops; - a tendency which, as has been seen, was fully developed soon after the breaking out of the civil war. Presbytery was, in fact, established by law; and if the law had but partial effect, its failure could not have been foreseen, and the attempt would undoubtedly have been renewed, if political affairs had taken a different turn. Before the Church of England was made Presbyterian, the Independent church system had been approved in New England by trial, and had become endeared to the affections of the people. They had no mind to part with it in favor of a new form of severe authority, any more than in favor of the rule of prelacy. They had hoped to recommend it to the adoption of their friends at home. If this could not be, still they could not consent to surrender their own enjoyment of it. And this repugnance was made stronger by the pretensions which Presbytery was urging. As much as that other form of the Church of England which it superseded, it claimed to be an exclusive religion. Nor would it yield to that other in the oppressiveness of its intolerance, if, when it should be fully established in power, it should be true to the arrogant principles, which, even in its weakness, many of its champions had disdained to conceal. While in England the literary war against Presbytery was in great part conducted by American combatants, their attention was presently required at home. William Vassall, a man of fortune, was one of the original Assistants Cabal of Presbyterians. named in the charter of the Massachusetts Company. He came to Massachusetts with Winthrop's fleet in the great emigration; but for some cause, possibly from dissatisfaction with the ten-. he almost 1635. dencies to Separatism which he witnessed, immediately returned.1 He crossed the sea again five years after, but then it was to the Colony of Plymouth. Establishing his home at Scituate, he there so conducted himself as to come under the reproach of being “a man of a busy and factious spirit, and always opposite to the civil governments of this country and the way of the churches."2 His disaffection occasioned the more uneasiness, because his brother, Samuel, also formerly an Assistant of the Massachusetts Company, was now one of the Parliament's Commissioners for the Government of Foreign Plantations.3 In the year when the early struggle between the Presbyterians and the Independents in England had disclosed the importance of the issues depending upon it, and the obstinate determination with which it was to be carried on, Vassall " Vassall "practised with" a few persons in Massachusetts "to take some course, first by petitioning the Courts of Massachusetts and of Plymouth, and, if that succeeded not, then to the Parliament of England, that the distinctions which were maintained here, both in civil and church estate, might be done away, and that we might be wholly governed by the laws of England." In a "Remonstrance and Humble Petition," addressed by 1 See Vol. I. 304, 323. Winthrop, II. 261. "A man never at rest, but when in the fire of contention." (Ibid., 321.) The records of Mr. Lothrop's church at Scituate, as early as the year 1637, present some confirmation of Winthrop's estimate of Vassall's perverse and uneasy disposition. See Vol. I. 633.-That Commission was this year confirmed (March 16, 1646), and the number of Commissioners enlarged by the addition of six peers and fourteen members of the House of Commons. Among the latter were Sir William Waller, Sir Henry Mildmay, Mr. George Fenwick, formerly of Saybrook, and Mr. Alexander Rigby, the patentee of lands on the river Saco. (See Vol. I. 595; Journal of the Commons, IV. 477.) * Winthrop, II. 261.—The movement in Plymouth was made at a General Court held in October, 1645, as appears from a letter of Winslow to Winthrop (Hutch. Col., 154); though the public record contains nothing respecting it. I infer from Winslow's letter, that half of the Assistants (namely, Standish, Hatherly, Brown, and Freeman) were in favor of larger indulgence to the malecontents. 1646. May 6. them to the General Court of Massachusetts, they represented, -1. that they could not discern in that Colony "a settled form of government according to the laws of England;" 2. that “ many thousands in these plantations of the English nation" were "debarred from all civil employments," and not permitted "so much as to have any vote in choosing magistrates, captains, or other civil and military officers;" and, 3. " that numerous members of the Church of England, not dissenting from the latest and best reformation of England, Scotland, &c.," were "detained from the seals of the covenant of free grace, because, as it was supposed, they will not take these churches' covenants.". They prayed for relief from each of these grievances; and they gave notice that, if it were denied, they should "be necessitated to apply their humble desires to the honorable Houses of Parliament, who, they hoped, would take their sad condition into their serious considerations."1 The memorial had scarcely reached the General Court before "copies were dispersed into the hands of some known ill-affected people in the governments adjoining,” and even as far as "the Dutch plantation, Virginia, and Bermudas." It was signed by seven persons. The best known of them was Samuel Maverick, whom Winthrop's company had found on an island in Boston harbor. Robert Child, another signer, was "a Paduan doctor, lately come into the country, who had not so much as tasted of their grievances, nor like to do, being a bachelor and only a sojourner, who never paid penny to any public charge." Thomas Fowle was "a church-member, but would be no freeman, liking better to be eased of that trouble and charge." Thomas Burton was "a sojourner also, and of no visible estate in the country." David Yale was "a young merchant, little acquainted 1 The document is in Hutch. Coll., 188-196. New England's Salamander, &c., 6. |