II. 1640. not confined to the interest of money, but extended CHAP to the hire of labouring cattle and implements of husbandry. Persons deserting the English settlements, and living in heathen freedom and profanity, were punished by fine and imprisonment. A male child above sixteen years of age, accused by his parents of rebellion against them and other notorious offences, was (in conformity with the Mosaic code) subjected to capital punishment; and any person courting a maid without the sanction of her parents, was fined and imprisoned. Yet the parental authority was not left unregulated. All parents were commanded to instruct and catechise their children and servants, whom the select men or overseers were directed to remove from their authority and commit to fitter hands, if they were found deficient in this duty 8; and children were allowed to seek redress from the magistrate if they were denied convenient marriage. The celebration of the ceremony of marriage was confined to the magistrate or such other persons as the general court should authorize. Their law of tenures was exceedingly simple and concise. The charter had conveyed the general territory to the company and its assigns enacted, "that five years' deemed a sufficient title." and it was very early quiet possession shall be Instead of enacting or in from the Indians, is ordered to return them eight baskets, to be fined five pounds, and hereafter to be called by the name of Josias, and not Mr., as formerly he used to be." Hutchinson, p. 436. Few obtained the title of Mr. in the colony: still fewer that of Esquire. Goodman and good wife were the common appellations. It was to merit and services, rather than wealth, that the distinctive appellations were given. lbid. The strictness and scrupulosity of manners affected by many of the inhabitants exceeded the standard of the laws: and associations appear to have been formed for suppressing the drinking of healths, and wearing of long hair and of periwigs. lbid. 151. In some instances, the purposes of these associations were afterwards adopted and enforced by the laws. It is related of some of the earlier settlers, that with a most absurd exaggeration of rigidity, they refrained from brewing on Saturday, because the beer would work upon Sunday. Douglas, Summary of the British Settlements in America, i. 371. 8 Such regulations were not unknown in Scotland. So late as the year 1678, a law was enacted by the corporation of the town of Rutherglen, commanding all parents to send their children to school, and adjudging that the schoolmaster should be entitled to his fees for every child in the parish, whether sent to his school or Ure's History of Rutherglen, p. 79. not. II. BOOK tending that the deficiencies of their legislative code should be supplied by the common or statute law of 1640. England, it was declared, that when the customs of the commonwealth were found defective, recourse should be had to the word of God 9. Like the tribes of Israel, the colonists of New England had forsaken their native land after a long and severe bondage, and journeyed into a wilderness for the sake of religion. They endeavoured to cherish a resemblance of condition, so honourable and so fraught with incitements to piety, by cultivating a conformity between their laws and customs and those which had distinguished the people of God. Hence arose some of the peculiarities which we have observed in their legislative code; and hence arose also the practice of commencing their sabbatical observances on Saturday evening, and of accounting every evening the commencement of the ensuing day. The same predilection for Jewish customs begot, or at least promoted, among them the habit of bestowing significant names on children, of whom the first three that were baptised in Boston church received the names of Joy, Recompense, and Pity. This custom seems to have prevailed with the greatest force in the town of Dorchester, which long continued to be remarkable for such names as Faith, Hope, Charity, Deliverance, Dependence, Preserved, Content, Prudent, Patience, Thankful, Hate-evil, Holdfast, and others of a similar character 1. • Abridgment of the Ordinances of New England, apud Neal, ii. Append. iv. p. 665, &c. Trumbull, i. 124. Josselyn, 178. Burnaby's Travels in America, 147. Chalmers, 167, 8. 276. Winthrop's Hist. (Savage's edition), i. 73. The primitive rigidity discernible in some of these laws was tempered by a pa. triarchal benevolence of administration. Many instances of this occur in Mather's Lives of the Governors. One I may be permitted to notice as a specimen. Governor Winthrop being urged to prosecute and punish a man who pillaged his magazine of firewood in winter, declared he would soon cure him of that malpractice: and, accordingly, sending for the delinquent, he told him, "You have a large family, and I have a large magazine of wood; come as often to it as you please, and take as much of it as you need to make your dwelling comfortable.And now," he added, turning to his friends, "I defy him to steal my firewood again." History of the British Dominions in America, B. ii. cap. 2. sec. 10. 311 CHAPTER III. New England embraces the Cause of the Parliament.-Federal Union between the New England States.-Provincial Coinage of Money.-Disputes occasioned by the Disfranchisement of Dissenters in Massachusetts.-Impeachment and Trial of Governor Winthrop.—Arbitrary Proceedings against the Dissenters.-Attempts to convert and civilize the Indians.-Character and Labours of Elliot and Mayhew.-Indian Bible printed in Massachusetts.-Effects of the Missionary Labour.-A Synod of the New England Churches.--Dispute between Massachusetts and the Long Parliament.-The Colony foils the Parliamen-and is favoured by Cromw.l.-The Protector's Administration beneficial to New England.-He conquers Acadie.-His Propositions to the Inhabitants of Massachusetts-declined by them.-Persecution of the Anabaptists in Massachusetts.-Conduct and Sufferings of the Quakers.-The Restoration.-Address of Massachusetts to Charles the Second.-Alarm of the Colonists -their Declaration of Rights.-The King's Message to Massachusetts-how far complied with.-Royal Charter of Incorporation to Rhode Island and Providence--and to Connecticut and Newhaven. CHAP. 1641. land em parliament. THE Coincidence between the principles of the co- III. lonists and the prevailing party in the Long Parliament, was cemented by the consciousness, that with the success of this body was identified the defence of New Engthe colonial liberties from the dangers that had so braces the recently menaced them. As soon as the colonists cause of the were informed of the convocation of that famous assembly, they despatched Hugh Peters and two other persons to promote the colonial interests in England. The mission terminated more fortunately for the colony than for its ambassadors. By a vote of the House of Commons 1 in the following year, the in The reasons assigned by the House for this resolution are, that the plantations of New England are likely to conduce to the propagation of the gospel, and 1642. II. 1642. BOOK habitants of all the various plantations of New England were exempted from payment of any duties, either upon goods exported thither, or upon those which they imported into the mother country, " until the House shall take further order therein to the contrary." The colonists, in return, cordially embraced the cause of their benefactors; and when the civil wars broke out in England, they passed an ordinance expressive of their approbation of the measures of parliament, and denouncing capital punishment against any who should disturb the peace of the commonwealth by endeavouring to raise a party for the King of England, or by discriminating between the king and the parliament, who truly maintained the cause of the king as well as their own. Happily for themselves, they were unable to signalize their predilection by more active interference in the contest; and, with a wise regard to their commercial interests, they gave free ingress into their harbours to trading vessels from the ports in possession of the king. They had likewise the good sense to decline an invitation that was sent to them, to depute Mr. Cotton, and others of their ministers, to attend, on their behalf, the Assembly of Divines at Westminster. Encouraged by the privileges that had been conferred on them, their industry made vigorous progress, and population rapidly increased. From the continent, they began to extend their occupation to the adjacent islands; and Mr. Mayhew, having obtained a grant of Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, and Elizabeth Isles, laid the foundation there of settlements that afterwards proved eminently serviceable to the conversion and civilization of the Indians. But an attempt which they made at the already have by the blessing of the Almighty had good and prosperous success without any public charge to the state." Yet, a few years after, the parliament expressed a different opinion of the obligations of Virginia to the endowment of the mother country, though, in this respect, the situation of the two colonies was precisely the same. same time to extend, if not their settlements, at least their principles, in another quarter of the continent, proved quite unsuccessful. The colonists of Virginia were in general stanch royalists, and, with comparatively little of the substance of religion, united a strong attachment to the forms and constitutions of the church of England. Yet, as we have seen, they had received, even as early as the reign of James, an accession to their numbers, composed of persons who had imbibed puritan sentiments, and • had fled from ecclesiastical persecution in England. A deputation from this portion of the Virginian settlers had been lately sent to Boston to represent their destitution of a gospel ministry, and solicit a supply of ministers from the New England churches. In compliance with this request, three clergymen were selected to proceed to Virginia, and furnished with recommendatory letters from the governor of Massachusetts to Sir William Berkeley. On their arrival in Virginia, they began to preach in several parts of the country, and the people flocked to hear them with an eagerness that might have been productive of important consequences. But the puritan principles, no less than the political sentiments of the colonists of New England, were too much the objects of aversion to Sir William Berkeley to admit of his encouragement being extended to proceedings so calculated to propagate their influence among his own people. So far from complying with the desire of his brother governor, he issued an order by which all per sons who would not conform to the ceremonies of the church of England were commanded to depart from Virginia by a certain day. The preachers returned to their own settlement; and thus was laid the foundation of a jealousy which long subsisted between the two oldest colonies of North America 2. CHAP. III. 1642. |