among the

1700.

with the pirates. The recent peace with the Eastern tribes had inspired confidence, and the English Agitation who had fled from Maine were returning to reinIndians. state their ravaged dwellings, when a report was spread that those tribes had made another conspiracy so extensive as to include even the Iroquois, and the remnants of the nations in the more compact English settlements." The Governor of Connecticut wrote to Lord BelJan. 29. lomont that he had information to this effect on such authority as to justify vigilance. At the same time, a rumor got into circulation among the Indians that the whites had resolved upon their extirpation, and were all but ready to strike the blow; and this apprehension of theirs lent probability to the story that they were prepar ing for new disorders. The Governor, believing the danger to be real, issued his proclamation, enjoining upon the people to abstain on the one hand from all offensive or questionable conduct, and on the other to observe their savage neighbors, and take precautions for defending themselves, in case of any outbreak.' He even proceeded to convene the General Court, which took prompt March 13. measures of precaution. Laws were passed for raising and equipping troops, for punishing mutiny and desertion among them, and for marching them out of the

when he represented to the Lords of Trade that he had "spent seven years and large sums of money in bringing all sorts of naval stores to perfection," and "offered his services for supplying the King with these commodities."

(British Colonial Papers.) He lived to be eighty years old. (Hist. Col., XXII. 29-33, 49–54, 5970.) In Lord Bellomont's speech to the General Court, May 30, 1700, he advises them to make a provision for the Huguenot clergyman, his congregation being reduced in numbers. "Let the present raging persecution of the French Protestants in France,"

he says, "stir up your zeal and compassion towards him." The people, he says, are ingenious and industrious, and deserving of encouragement. They were naturalized in April, 1731. (Provincial Laws, II. 586, 595.)

1 See O'Callaghan, IV. 606–620; comp. Journal of the Board of Trade for April 19, 1700.- The Colonial Papers contain indications of renewals of the alarm from January to the autumn. Comp. N. H. Provincial Papers, III. 324 et seq., 346.

O'Callaghan, IV. 612–616.

3 Letter of Bellomont to the Board of Trade. (O'Callaghan, IV. 636.)

Province at the Governor's discretion; and small garrisons were posted at three or four places in the western part of Maine. But either there had in fact been no danger, or these proceedings averted it. The natives remained quiet, and the alarm passed away, having continued through nearly all the year.1

Nov. 28.

The Governor gave various particulars of what he had observed of the condition of his Provinces, in a 1700. letter written to the Lords of Trade after his return to New York. "'Tis demonstrable these plantations are capable of employing a thousand good ships of burden and twenty thousand seamen, more than are at present employed by England. By due encouragement to the two following articles of naval stores and cultivating vineyards, the proposed improvement and increase of shipping and seamen will be accomplished. Under the head of naval stores, I suppose tar, pitch, rosin, turpentine, oil of turpentine, ship timber of all sorts, as planks and compass timber, masts, bowsprits, and yards." "The staple in the Massachusetts Province,"

Statistics of

he said, "is the fishery. They compute Massachu at Boston that they ship off fifty thousand

'Hutchinson (Hist., II. 120) thought that the report which alarmed the New England Indians was a device of the Iroquois, who got presents as often as the English had occasion for a treaty with them.

2 "Last April I examined the registers of all the vessels in the three Provinces of my government, and found there then belonged to the town of Boston 25 ships from 100 tons to 300; ships about 100 tons and under, 38; brigantines, 50; ketches, 13; sloops, 67: in all, 194 vessels. To other towns in that Province there belonged then about 70 vessels of all sorts, whereof 11 were ships of good burden. To New York there then

setts.

belonged 6 ships above, and 8 under, 100 tons; 2 ketches; 27 brigantines, and 81 sloops. To New Hampshire at that time 11 ships of good burden, 5 brigantines, 4 ketches, and 4 sloops. I believe one may venture to say there are more good vessels belonging to the town of Boston than to all Scotland and Ireland, unless one should reckon the small craft, such as herring-boats. . . . . . Some merchants at Boston, with whom I discoursed sometimes about the trade of that Province, computed that Boston had four times the trade of New York." (Lord Bellomont to the Lords of Trade, in O'Callaghan, IV. 787, 790, 791.)

quintals of dry fish every year, about three-quarters whereof is sent to Bilboa." There were sixty-three wharves in Boston, and fourteen in Charlestown. He had good hopes as to projects for "making salt and pot-ashes," and there seemed to him to be a fair prospect as to the production of silk and wines. But he had heard murmurs against the legal restrictions on commerce. "Some gentlemen of the Council . . were very warm, and expressed great discontent at the Acts of Trade and Navigation that restrained them from an open free trade to all parts of the world. They alleged they were as much Englishmen as those in England, and thought they had a right to all the privileges that the people of England had; that the London merchants had procured those restraining laws to be made, on purpose to make the people of the plantations to go to market to them."1

In Massachusetts, and at the capital especially, what remained of the primitive religious strictness could not fail to be relaxed by the extension of commercial activity, as well as by the influence of that provision of King Wil liam's charter which detached the political franchise from church membership. The only place of worship of the

The English church in Massachusetts.

English establishment had had a hard struggle for life against the passionate dislike of the people; its supporters had been dispersed, and its minister had gone home discouraged, at the time of the recent revolution; and it recovered with difficulty from the disrepute contracted by its connection with the usurpation of Andros. Lord Bellomont, the first Governor, except Andros, attached to its communion, attempted to revive it in Boston. He brought from England a present from the Bishop of London of a collection of books for the Boston church, and an assistant for Mr. Myles, the rector, who had succeeded to the place of Randolph's

1 O'Callaghan, IV. 781 et seq.

friend, Ratcliffe.1 The assistant, dying in the West Indies on the voyage, was followed by another, Mr. Bridge, who held the place some eight or nine years. The Governor, while in Boston, worshipped at King's Chapel on Sundays; but he did something by way of amends by a regular attendance at the weekly Thursday lecture of the First Church. He wrote to the Lords of Trade that some persons in New England desired "a Church-of- 1699. England minister," and expressed his hope that Oct. 24. they would "patronize so good a design." In the temper of England, at that moment especially, the patronage of the Board for that good design did not need to be solicited, and they interested themselves with the Bishop of London to obtain for the colonists the advantage of ecclesiastical supervision.

New phase

A passage much more important than these in the religious history of the time related to an abatement of the ancient rigor of Congregational administration. A fourth Congregational church was established in Boston upon principles highly distasteful to the friends of the old order of the churches. Most, if not all, of the undertakers, as the associates in this enterprise were called, were persons of substance and of social

'Ratcliffe, the clergyman imported by Randolph (see above, III. 494), went back to England in three or four months after the Revolution. About the same time Mr. Samuel Myles came over and took his place. Myles went to England after a few years, and bespoke the favor of the sovereigns for his church; and William, after the Queen's death, made it a present of some furniture, and of some plate for the communion table. (Greenwood, History of King's Chapel, 50-67.)

2 Journals of the Board of Trade for Feb. 2, 1700.- - A notable publication of this year was that of a tract

of Congre

gational

politics in

Boston.

by Judge Sewall, entitled "The Selling of Joseph." It was an argument against slavery, with a refutation of reasonings in its favor, the same as have been current in our own day. It seems to have produced fruit, for in the following year (May 26, 1701) Boston instructed its Representatives in the General Court "to promote the encouraging of the bringing in of white servants, and to put a period to negroes being slaves." (Mass. Hist. Col., XVIII. 184.) — Thomas Danforth died Nov. 5 of this year, having lived to be seventy-six years old. He had long disappeared from public life.

1

consideration, though none were high in office. In their form of worship they proposed no deviation from the exist ing practice, except in respect to the reading of the Scriptures without comment, which-probably on account of its being prescribed in the English rubric-had hitherto not been practised in the churches of New England. But the great changes which, to the extreme displeasure of the leaders of religious opinion, they introduced into their own use, were such as struck at the foundation of the dig nity of church-membership. Hitherto the usage was for a candidate for admission to the privileges of communion to give an account in public of his personal religious experiences; the terms of admission to baptism, though they had been modified, were still strict; and the church (the body of communicants) invited and contracted with a minister, whom the body of worshippers was then compelled to support according to the terms which the church had made. The projectors of the "Church in Brattle Square," in a "manifesto or declaration" which the clamor Nov. 17. around induced them to publish, professed that they" dared not refuse baptism to any child offered by any professed Christian, upon his engagement to see it educated, if God gave life and ability, in the Christian religion. But this being a ministerial act," they thought it" the pastor's province to receive such professions and engagements. . We judge it fitting and expedient," they continue," that whoever would be admitted to par

1699.

1 See above, Vol. II. 491.

2 Acts and Resolves, 102, 216. These Acts were passed to define and settle the respective rights of church and congregation. The claim of the churches to the right of appointing ministers had not been asserted, or, at least, not been submitted to, with absolute uniformity. As early as 1672 the church and congregation at Salem acted together in the choice of their pastor. In 1685, a minister was

elected at Dedham, "the inhabitants voting together without distinction of communicants and non-communicants." In 1697, the church in Charlestown followed the same method. (Lamson, History of the First Church in Dedham, 40, 90; comp. Robbins, History of the Second Church, 41.) But such deviations had scarcely broken the continuity of the usage.