THE MASSACHUSETTS BAY COMPANY 159 distance to govern themselves separately. Such plantation covenants were used in the next twenty years in the founding of many other settlements in New England, and they provided a written fundamental instrument of authority wherever there was no royal grant conferring jurisdiction on a lord proprietor or a chartered company. Throughout the whole of its separate existence the Plymouth colony was a poor and struggling community, but the religious motives that had inspired it found a wider outlet in the larger and more important settlement that was founded ten years later on the shores of Massachusetts Bay. Such a stream of emigration was attracted as England had never seen before, and the new commonwealth rapidly became a factor of immense importance in the development of the Empire. The germ of the enterprise is to be found in one of the small fishing ventures, common along the New England coast at the time, which was started at Cape Ann in 1623 by certain merchants of the town of Dorchester, and by 1626 seemed to have come to the usual unprofitable end. But the Rev. John White, the Puritan incumbent of the parish of Holy Trinity, Dorchester, saw in the venture an opportunity to further a project of wider import. Conditions in England were rapidly growing unbearable to men of a certain temper, for the rift between Crown and Parliament was daily widening and religious dissensions becoming more acute. Puritanism and English liberty alike seemed swamped by tyranny and ungodliness, and White conceived no less a plan than to found a refuge for the righteous beyond the Atlantic and there "to raise a bulwark against the kingdom of Antichrist which the Jesuits labour to rear up in all quarters of the world". The Protestants of the Palatinate and La Rochelle were already "overwhelmed and enslaved" and he urged his countrymen "to avoid the plague while it is foreseen, and not to tarry as they did till it overtook them".1 White exercised great influence among the straitest sect of Puritans under the leadership of the Earl of Lincoln, who were closely bound together by ties of friendship and intermarriage, and they warmly took up his plan. The Dorchester fishing company was revived; a grant of land was obtained from the New England Council with the assistance of the Earl of Warwick, and one of White's parishioners, John Endicott, was sent out in September 1628 to prepare the way for those who would follow later. The number of the supporters of the scheme grew rapidly, and on 4 March 1629 they obtained from the Crown a charter establishing "the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England". Its provisions were modelled on those of preceding chartered companies for colonisation, with a Governor, a Court of Assistants and rules for the holding of quarterly General Courts of all the freemen.2 According to the Virginia and Bermuda precedents a local governor and council 1 General Considerations for Planting New England (1629). 2 Massachusetts Records (ed. Shurtleff), pp. 1-20. were appointed by the Company to manage affairs in New England; they established their first settlement at Salem and by the end of the summer of 1629 the colony numbered about 300 persons. A momentous departure from precedent was made by the Company in England during the same summer. On 26 August 1629, after much secret debate, it was determined by the ruling members of the Company that they would transfer themselves and their families with their belongings to Massachusetts. They resolved that "the whole Government, together with the patent for the said Plantation, be by an order of court legally transferred and established to remain with us and others which shall inhabit upon the said Plantation".1 That this resolution could be legally carried out was due to the fact that, whether by design or otherwise, the patent departed from earlier colonising grants since it contained no provision to secure that the government of the Company should be carried on in England. It is possible that the petitioners for the patent knew how the Plymouth colonists a couple of years before had bought out their London partners and so made themselves independent of outside interference; there may or may not have been a positive design to secure a like autonomy, but whatever the case, the step was of far-reaching consequences. John Winthrop, the newly elected governor of the Company, in the summer of 1630 took out with him nearly a thousand emigrants who had paid their own costs of transportation and were bound by no financial obligations to promoters remaining behind in England. Thenceforward with hardly a break until his death in 1649 Winthrop took a leading share in the government of Massachusetts, and to him is attributable in no small degree the success of the colony. Though the form of government that he did so much to found was one of the main roots from which sprang the troubles of the American Revolution, Winthrop undeniably deserves to be ranked very high among the builders of the Empire. By the transfer of the form of government of an autonomous trading company, and its almost insensible adaptation to the purposes of civil government, the Massachusetts colony was provided with a polity based not upon traditional and flexible English precedents but upon a written instrument to be interpreted according to strict legality. The promoters had no intention of founding a democracy, though that was to be the most striking result of the colony's development. They believed in strong government by those qualified to exercise it, and they felt themselves divinely called to establish God's kingdom. Hence the narrowness and aggressiveness of the ruling clique of magistrates and clergy which from the beginning distinguished Massachusetts from other colonies. The management of the Company's affairs and therefore the whole governing power in 1 Winthrop, R. C., Life of J. Winthrop, 1, 345. GOVERNMENT IN MASSACHUSETTS 161 the colony was legally vested by the charter in the subscribing freemen, but of the 2000 inhabitants in 1631 not more than twelve possessed this qualification. A demand for a share of political rights could not be refused to some of the leading colonists outside the governing circle without the danger of an exodus to the unoccupied lands of Gorges and Mason to the north. Again, some of the outlying settlers raised objections to the payment of taxes about which they had not been consulted, and the governing clique gave way a little and agreed to admit a number of new freemen to the General Court, not like subscribers to the original commercial Company, but as citizens admitted to the franchise. Many of them in outlying settlements could not attend meetings in Boston and elected deputies to represent their particular communities. Before 1635, therefore, a full system of parliamentary government had been evolved from what had at first been the ordinary machinery of a joint-stock company.1 But through all the changes the complete control of the ruling few was never weakened, and the essential character of the government remained that of a theocratic oligarchy. For local purposes the settlers organised themselves by Church. covenant into a closely-knit and self-perpetuating body from which all but the most rigid Puritans were excluded. As the colony grew, this device for Church government was adopted in each new settlement, and it produced momentous results. It derived not from English but from continental precedents inspired by John Calvin, and it meant that Massachusetts from the first diverged from England in matters of religion, for worship according to the form of the English Church was stringently forbidden, and those who practised it were driven out. In civil matters, too, the organised congregation became the body in which the local affairs of the community were managed. Political rights were thus restricted to the narrow circle of Church members, an undeniable narrowing of the usual English freehold franchise. But the form of local government was strong and efficient under the lead of the minister, a better educated man than the rest; it ensured the extension of the colony not by unorganised individuals in haphazard fashion, but by a number of community groups each carrying with it a ready-made organisation. Englishmen emigrating to Massachusetts became subject to a government which differed radically from anything they had known before. Between 1629 and 1640 its population rose from less than 300 to more than 14,000, but not more than one in every five adult males possessed full Church membership or political rights. Religious freedom was non-existent, for the government was infinitely more rigorous in its demands for orthodoxy according to its own interpretation and as unsparing in its pursuit of the unorthodox by the civil power as any English government had been. 1 Osgood, H. L., American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, vol. 1, pt ì, chap. i. CHBE I II What then attracted men to New England in such large numbers? The answer is to be sought in its economic conditions and the opportunities it afforded to the common man. The England of the seventeenth century was an agricultural country; most Englishmen lived under rural conditions and were filled like all countrymen with land hunger. In New England land could be had almost for the asking, and it could be profitably cultivated in much the same way as at home. If a man went to Virginia or the West Indies, he had to serve a long apprenticeship under unfamiliar conditions, and even when he had earned his freedom, he could only get land for himself by the payment of rent. The area of the West Indian islands was so small that all the cultivable land was rapidly taken up and newcomers were doomed to the position of landless labourers who were dependent upon imports even for their food. The New England township on the other hand was almost self-sufficing, and though a newcomer had to live hard and work hard, he was independent from the start, and could look forward with some assurance to a modest prosperity. The artisan could find ample room to ply his craft under vastly more healthy conditions than medieval slums and medieval trade restrictions afforded. It was free land and freedom of labour that drew men to New England. The process of migration was to some extent selective, for the poorer and more shiftless emigrants could not pay the expenses of their transportation and so were compelled to accept service with the recruiting agents for the plantation colonies. Those who were better off could pay their own passage and go where they would. The selective process was continued when they arrived in the colony; the more hardy and adventurous pressed out to the edge of the settlements in search of the best land available, leaving their weaker brethren to settle more closely in the older parts and help in forming a well-knit society. Thus the New England pioneers had advanced bases in America from which to carry on their conquest of the wilderness and they were no longer dependent for supplies on the distant home country. So there began that influence of the American frontier in the life of the Empire which has been of profound and lasting importance.1 The close control of the Massachusetts magistrates was irksome even to many who shared their religious views, and it awoke in them a desire to move further afield. The first step on the long westward trail that was ultimately to lead to the shores of the Pacific was taken when settlers moved inland from the coast plain towards the fertile lands along the Connecticut River. The Dutch from Manhattan had established trading posts there as early as 1626, and they were followed in 1633 by certain fur-traders from Plymouth. The Massachusetts 1 See Turner, F. J., "The Significance of the Frontier in American History"; Proceedings of Wisconsin State Hist. Soc. 1894, pp. 79-112; "Social Forces in American History", Mag. of Hist. XIII, 117; The Frontier in American History, passim. CONNECTICUT AND RHODE ISLAND 163 authorities declined to grant permission to join in this Indian trade, but in 1635-6 organised congregations of newcomers from England and older colonists trekked across the hills in search of fertile land and formed settlements round Hartford on the middle course of the river. The leading spirit in the movement was the Rev. Thomas Hooker, a man of great spiritual force who had found it impossible to agree with his ministerial brethren either in England or in Massachusetts. The men of the River Towns, as the settlements were called, had no commission either from the English Government or from the authorities in Boston, and their only title to their lands was obtained by nominal purchases from the neighbouring Indians. Massachusetts strove to retain control though the new towns lay outside the limits of her charter, but Hooker was determined to be independent. In 1639 under his leadership the settlers organised a formal government1 on a purely democratic basis without any religious requirements attached to the franchise, though possibly there were practical restrictions. Hooker maintained that the foundation of authority lies in the free consent of the people, and they alone have the power to appoint officers and magistrates and to set bounds and limitations to their authority. The constitution or "Fundamental Orders" drawn up by the elected representatives of the settlers contained no recognition of any superior authority in England and implied a claim to complete independence. The document remained unknown or unregarded by the English Government which had its hands full elsewhere. It was the first written constitution in the Englishspeaking world on an ostensibly democratic basis and is of importance as illustrating what was rapidly to become the feature that most clearly differentiated the New England colonies from the home country. The Fundamental Orders remained the sole instrument of government in the colony until Governor John Winthrop junior procured a formal charter from Charles II after the Restoration. of Hooker and the Connecticut colonists left Massachusetts against the will of the magistrates and only obtained their reluctant permission to depart after much pressure. Roger Williams, however, the founder of the settlements around Narragansett Bay, which afterwards became the colony of Rhode Island, was expelled for his attacks upon the government of the oligarchy. An able writer and preacher great personal charm he came to Boston in 1631 and was called to be minister of the church at Salem but soon got into trouble with the authorities for proclaiming that the civil power had no authority to punish religious offences. He passed for a time to Plymouth, but in 1634 he returned to Salem and preached the doctrines of the separation of Church and State and of religious toleration more persistently than before. He also maintained that the Massachusetts charter had no legal basis and that the King had no right to grant the lands on 1 Osgood, 1, 304. |