themselves.1 Some settled on lands purchased from the Mohawks in the frontier valley of Schoharie, others along the Mohawk River, forming, with Fort Hunter and Oswego, the new frontier of New York2 (1726). Some, at the invitation of Lieutenant-Governor Keith, settled on the north-west frontier of Pennsylvania. Their leader, Conrad Weiser, long served the Pennsylvanian government in negotiations with the Indians.3 New York had thus hardly fulfilled the hopes of wealth and liberty held out by the "Newlanders", as the emigration agents were called. Accordingly the greater part of the 75,000 Germans who crossed the Atlantic after 1717 was attracted rather to Pennsylvania. There they helped to settle the western frontier as far as the Susquehanna. Others passed onwards along the Shenandoah Valley into the Valley of Virginia and North Carolina and western Maryland, forming always a barrier force on the western frontiers.4 In South Carolina, Swiss emigrants brought by John Peter Pury of Neuchâtel under contract with the Government to cultivate vines and silk, founded Purysburg on the Savannah River in 1731. Other German settlements continued to be made in the neighbourhood, along the Edisto and Congaree Rivers, until the central and southwestern part of the province was to a considerable extent peopled by them. These German emigrants had little influence politically. They were the product of an economic as well as a religious movement. Sold as indentured labourers and servants to farmers in the interior, they passed through a term of toil and servitude to possessions and freedom they could not have attained at home. They formed agricultural settlements, where they kept to their own language and customs, and left the government to the British settlers. Their chief importance was as an occupying force, destined to form part of a new civilisation not wholly British in character, and as helping immediately in the westward movement to the mountains. All such foreign Protestants who had resided in the colonies for seven years were naturalised by an Act of Parliament in 1740. Before that, foreign-born immigrants had been naturalised in the several colonies, either by special act or general law, as in New York in 1715, and in Massachusetts in 1731.5 Purely British elements were contributed by the emigration of disbanded soldiers, Jacobites, and the transported felons. Many Scottish prisoners, military and political, after the risings of 1715 and 1745, were sent to the Plantations and sold into service. Others came of their own accord, and founded separate settlements, as in North 1 Cal. St. Pap. Col. 1710-15, passim. 2 N.Y. Col. Docs. v, 460-634. Walton, Joseph, Conrad Weiser and the Indian Policy of Colonial Pennsylvania. Hercheval, History of the Valley of Virginia; Wayland, The German Element in the Shenandoah Valley; Schmidt, History of German Element in Virginia; Faust, Virginia Mag. Hist. 5 Cal. St. Pap. Col. 1715, nos. 435, 530; Mass. Provincial Laws, п, 586. 6 N.C. Col. Recs. IV, p. ix; Cal. St. Pap. Col. 1716, nos. 309–314. RELIGIOUS DENOMINATIONS 403 and South Carolina. Many Irish Roman Catholics settled in Maryland, and many Protestant "Scottish-Irish", mainly from the north of Ireland, on the borders of New England and Nova Scotia,1 or passed through Philadelphia and made their way south and west. The German Protestants were for the most part Baptists. Their several sects-Mennonites, Dunkers, Schwenkfelders, Moraviansderived from that "Pietism" which was a revolt against the formalism of the Lutheran and reformed Churches. By their insistence on simplicity of life, liberty of conscience and a popular Church, they represented essentially the same tendencies as Quakers and Methodists. It was, indeed, from the Moravians in Georgia that John Wesley learned the Pietistic features of their faith, which led to his foundation of Methodism. Eager for missionary work among the Creeks and Cherokees, they had obtained a grant of land there. But their refusal to bear arms against the Spaniards (1737) led to their removal and settlement at Bethlehem, Pa., near the abortive settlement of Nazareth, where George Whitefield had attempted, in 1740, in conjunction with them to found a school for negroes.2 With ScottishIrish immigrants, the influx of Presbyterianism advanced steadily, in spite of attempts at repression as in Virginia, and Baptists also increased all over the continent, especially in North Carolina. There were relatively few Roman Catholics in the colonies. Where they were most numerous, the laws against them were severest. In Maryland where, owing to its origin, they formed about one-thirteenth of the population, they were penalised by a double tax, and disfranchised if they refused to take the oaths appointed, whilst their neighbourhood to Virginia led to restrictive legislation in the Old Dominion. In general, the proximity of French Jesuit missionaries and their intrigues with the Indians, and resentment at the political interference of the Pope, helped to keep the colonists intensely hostile to Roman Catholicism. In New England, every township had a Congregational Church, which formed the centre of its society. It was only by degrees that some toleration was extended to other denominations. In New York and New Jersey, where politics blended with ecclesiastical issues and the suspicion of Jacobitism hung over many of the Anglican clergy, it was said that the proportion of Anglicans to Dissenters was one to forty. Under the influence of the Anglican reaction the Church of England began to take a more active part in colonial life. The Bishop of London was assigned ecclesiastical jurisdiction as metropolitan of the colonies. He was represented by Commissaries, of whom the most eminent were James Blair of Virginia and Dr Bray of Maryland. In Virginia, Maryland, and the Carolinas, the Church 1 C.O. 5, 898, nos. 55, 61. 2 Transactions of the Moravian Society; Levering, Hist. of Bethlehem. of England was established by law. Unhappily, the character of the clergy was deplorable, save in South Carolina, where the Church had to compete with dissenting sects and the ministers were mainly supplied by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.1 Towards the middle of the century, a demand for a resident American bishop was raised by those who wished to improve the status of the colonial clergy. The project was viewed with alarm by the dissenters of New England and the middle colonies. Rather than rouse old controversies, Walpole and Newcastle rejected Bishop Sherlock's proposal. It had been urged also by George Berkeley, Dean of Cloyne, who had settled in Rhode Island with the object of founding a training college for priests of the Established Church. His scheme failed for lack of funds, and perhaps for want of proper direction. It was largely due to the advocacy of Commissary Blair that the venerable Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts had been founded in 1701. Its missionaries laboured not only to convert the Indians and negroes, but also to draw Quakers and other dissenters into the Anglican fold. Their efforts were resented, and the close connection of the Society with the British Government caused it to be regarded as part of a political design to exercise greater control over the colonies. Yet their work was not without effect even in New England, and especially in Connecticut. At Yale College, many undergraduates were converted to the Anglican creed.4 It was at Yale that Jonathan Edwards was trained, whose preaching in Massachusetts in 1734 began that great revival of religious enthusiasm known as the "Great Awakening". He was followed by George Whitefield, an ordained priest of the Established Church, who came to Boston from Georgia in 1740 and travelled through the colonies from New England to the south, preaching often in the fields and with Edwards making thousands of converts.5 1 Hawks, F. L., Contributions to the Ecclesiastical History of the United States, 11, 249; Bishop Meade, Old Churches, etc. of Virginia, 11, 351. 2 Newcastle Papers, printed in Cross's Anglican Episcopate, app. xi. 3 Fraser, A. C., Works of George Berkeley; Foster, W. E., Amer. Antiquarian Society Proceedings, April, 1892. 4 Osgood, H. L., Amer. Cols. in the Eighteenth Century, vol. I, chap. i; Perry, Hist. Amer. Episc. Church, vol. 1; Hist. MSS Comm. Rep. XIV, app. R, p. 32. 5 Tracy, Joseph, The Great Awakening; Edwards, Jonathan, Thoughts on the Revival of Religion in New England, 1740. CHAPTER XIV THE GOVERNMENT OF THE EMPIRE, 1660-1763 To discover the origins of government in the British colonies in America one must examine the efforts of private proprietors, corporations, and individuals to establish order and produce contentment in the Plantations which they were setting up in the New World, for none of the early settlements overseas was projected or carried out as an act of official enterprise. Though Virginia, Barbados, and Bermuda became royal colonies in the seventeenth century, each had already established the main features of its government while still in private hands. Each had a governor, council, and Assembly; each was making its own laws with the approval of its proprietor; and each was subject, within certain limits, to proprietary supervision and control. The Crown, on taking over these colonies, continued, after some consideration of other plans, the forms of government already in operation. With Jamaica, the Leeward Islands, Massachusetts Bay, and New York-the only other colonies that came into the hands of the Crown in the seventeenth century-the case was somewhat different. Jamaica was a conquered province, the Leeward Islands, though possessing independent governments of their own, remained under Barbados until 1671; Massachusetts Bay, deprived of its charter in 1684, suffered serious curtailment of its self-governing powers, when it was merged in the Dominion of New England in 1686; while New York, likewise a conquered province and for twenty years a propriety under the Duke of York, remained a royal colony without an Assembly for three years, after which it, too, became a part of the same Dominion. In the last two instances, Stuart policy preferred an executive form of government as most suitable for a colony, and rejected the established practice of the older colonies where popular Assemblies had become an accepted part of the colonial system. But with the Revolution of 1689, rule by governor and council without Assembly came to an end. When, in 1691, Massachusetts Bay and New York emerged from the aftermath of the Revolution, each received the familiar form of government by governor, council and Assembly, and these were the last of the seventeenth-century settlements, under the old British system, to reach a self-governing basis. Jamaica and the Leeward Islands offer a different story. One was a newly acquired tropical island, where heat bred animosity and people died very fast and suddenly (as Governor Inchiquin said); the other, a group of four small islands, lying in close proximity to each other, too small for complete separation, yet too far away and self-sufficient for permanent union under a centralised control. Jamaica for the first five years was under military rule; in 1661 civil government was set up with governor and council, though an Assembly was not called until 1663. For a short time laws were passed either by the governor and council or by the Assembly; but in 1664 this dual system was given up, and governor, council, and Assembly became the law-making body. However, as the laws thus passed lasted for only two years unless confirmed by the Crown, and as in fact they remained without attention from the Privy Council for more than ten years, the colony was obliged to hold biennial Assemblies in order that the people should not be without the necessary legislation. Among these laws, passed in 1664, was one declaring the laws of England in force in the island and designed, as Governor Modyford wrote, to make the colonists "partakers of the most perfectly incomparable laws" of their native country. These together with its own "municipal laws", as he called them, were expected to meet the needs of the colony. But in 1677, the Lords of Trade, newly in office and the first body to give serious thought to the form a governor's instructions should take, found themselves facing a perplexing situation in the colony: laws in force for but two years unless confirmed; laws not confirmed in England for ten years; the colony holding biennial sessions; revenue insufficient and temporary; fortifications out of repair and no funds with which to improve them.1 They, therefore, made a new experiment in colonial history. Construing Jamaica and Virginia as in the same class with IrelandPlantations under the Crown-they decided to apply to them Poynings's Law. In 1677 in the instructions to Carlisle (Jamaica) and in 1679 in the instructions to Culpeper (Virginia) they recommended, and the Privy Council consequently ordered, that the Assemblies meet only at the direction of the King, and that all laws already passed be sent to England and thence returned for the consent of the Assemblies, "as laws originally coming from your Majesty". Such laws were to be passed under the style "Be it enacted by the King's most excellent Majesty by and with the consent of the General Assembly". Had this instruction been enforced it would have taken away from the Assembly all powers of initiation and deliberation, particularly in matters of revenue. There is nothing to show that Culpeper ever disclosed his instructions to the Assembly in Virginia, and the matter is taken much too seriously by Virginia historians. The Assembly there, willingly enough, passed the three acts which he brought over-a naturalisation act, a revenue act, and a Bacon's rebellion act-even though these acts were drawn up in 1 Cal. St. Pap. Col. 1677-80, p. 368. A.P.C., Col. 1, no. 1177; Cal. St. Pap. Col. 1677-80, nos. 412, 480, 641. 3 Cal. St. Pap. Col. 1677-80, nos. 971, 973, 1210, 1211; P.R.O., Colonial Office, 5/1355, p. 334; Wertenbaker, Virginia under the Stuarts, p. 226. |