Colonial America
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Thanks to the assistance of the Wampanoags, the Pilgrims' settlement became fairly stable within its first year of existence. The treaty allowed them to harvest their first crops in safety, and in recognition of this divine providence they declared a day of thanksgiving, one of the first to be celebrated by Europeans on American soil.2 They continued to struggle financially, however. As of 1624 there were just 134 inhabitants, and they were still not generating the profits that English investors expected. Though some attempts were made to build fishing vessels, most Pilgrims devoted themselves to farming, since this was what they were accustomed to do. Unfortunately, farming in the area offered subsistence at best, even when carried out communally. A further problem was that most settlers wanted to farm their own land. For the first few years only personal gardens of up to one acre had been allowed. By November 1626, most of the adventurers in England were disillusioned with the project and agreed to sell their shares.
This agreement made it possible to distribute the settlement's collective wealth to the individual shareholders, each of whom was allotted 20 acres and a proportion of the sheep, goats, cattle, and poultry. To find the money to buy out the English adventurers, Bradford and the other leaders had to form a trading monopoly of all the colony's commercial enterprises. The most promising commodities remained fish and furs, since the latter could be traded for corn with the Abenaki peoples to the north. Sadly, the London end of the business was not well managed, and the debt was extinguished only in 1648 after much vexation and expense.
Although a few other small English colonies appeared in Massachusetts in the 1620s, in the short term they were more of a drain on the Pilgrims' resources than a help. Thomas Weston's 1622 settlement at Wessagusset survived for only a year. A small colony of fishermen was established in 1623 on Cape Ann and abandoned in 1626. Though some of the inhabitants moved to Naumkeag, later called Salem, they were too few to have much impact on Plymouth. The inhabitants of Thomas Morton's 1625 trading settlement at Mount Wollaston, later Braintree, shocked the Pilgrims' religious sensibilities with their revelries, and the Pilgrims drove them away in 1628.
Fortunately, the Pilgrims' general economic situation brightened in the 1630s with the arrival of thousands of new settlers brought by the much larger and wealthier Massachusetts Bay Company to a new colony northwest of Plymouth, on the Massachusetts Bay. With the sudden new demand for its livestock and grain, Plymouth at last attracted new settlers and its population began to rise. According to William Bradford, now the governor and historian of the colony, the number of inhabitants rose to 300 by 1630, and with continued expansion, the population had reached 550 by 1637. The Council for New England granted the Pilgrims a new patent confirming their right to frame laws and settle the area in 1630, and the colonists in 1636 adopted a formal constitution providing for a governor and court of seven assistants to be elected by the freemen, or shareholders, of the colony.
Plymouth would remain a small, politically insignificant colony, isolated from mainstream Puritanism and thus denied recruitment from a wider population. However, it was important in providing additional lessons for English investors in how to create a successful colonial venture. The negotiation of peaceful relationships with the local Indians had been shown to be possible. Bringing families to settle a farming colony had proven a viable option for creating a stable society, far preferable to a population of young, single men. And the fact that the settlers had a strong sense of common religious purpose had also helped them to persist. The much larger colony of Massachusetts was soon to build upon these lessons.
3 Massachusetts: A City on the Hill
The Massachusetts Bay Colony formally began in 1629, when a joint stock company created by a group of English merchants obtained a charter from the king giving it title to all the lands between the Merrimack River and the tip of Massachusetts Bay, as well as the right to any minerals, subject to the usual percentage for the Crown. The charter replaced a 1628 charter of doubtful validity for the same territory from the Council for New England. The new entity, to be known as “The Company of Massachusetts Bay,” was to hold its lands from the king in free and common socage.3 It was to be managed by a governor and council of 18 assistants, elected annually by the ordinary freemen (that is, shareholders), otherwise known as the general court. It would have the power “to make, ordain, and establish all manner of wholesome and reasonable Orders, Lawes, Statutes, and Ordinances,” providing these were consistent with the laws of England. As in Virginia, those emigrating were to “enjoy all Liberties and Immunities of free and natural Subjects … as if born within the Realm of England.” Its shareholders were much like the shareholders of other English investment companies, and included merchants and prominent gentlemen well known to the king. But in another respect, they were less typical of investors in English trading ventures, in that they were all participants in the Puritan movement.
The Puritans were part of a broad religious reform movement within the Church of England which had begun during the reign of Elizabeth I and grown during the reign of the Stuarts, James I and Charles I. Like the Pilgrims who settled at Plymouth, the Puritans shared a general concern that the doctrines and ceremonies of the Church of England had remained too similar to those of Roman Catholicism, as well as a suspicion that many members of the church were not truly committed to doing God's will. Unlike the Pilgrims, however, they were not separatists. Puritans were reformers, determined to reform the Church of England but not abandon it. Moreover, they were not a tiny oppressed minority. They constituted a significant group within the church, and many of their members held positions of influence and authority.
The Puritans' denial of separatism was important, since it enabled them to claim descent and hence legitimacy from the early Christian church. What they objected to in the Anglican Church was government by bishops, for whom they could find no biblical justification. In their view authority lay with the congregation as it had, they believed, after the death of Christ. They also quarreled with much of the liturgy in the Book of Common Prayer, believing the Bible to be the only source of Christian authority. In addition, they detested what they regarded as the many traces of popery, for example, in the vestments and altar cloths still lavishly used in Anglican churches. The same reasoning led them to abandon feast days, including Christmas, as pagan or popish relics, preferring instead simple acts of thanksgiving in accordance with the Scriptures. In this sense they were true radicals who wanted to transform English culture.
Theologically, the Puritans were disciples of John Calvin, the Genevan reformer, and herein lay their greatest criticism of the Church of England. Calvin stated that, because of original sin, the world was irrevocably corrupt. Only a few whom God had chosen through his divine grace would be saved. Although the Church of England formally acknowledged this doctrine, the thrust of its theology lay elsewhere. Luther had preached that all men could be saved if they repented of their sins. Most Anglicans went one step further, accepting the arguments of the Dutch theologian Arminius that good works were themselves a necessary demonstration of that faith. To the followers of Calvin this view was abhorrent, since it threatened to lead to all the old abuses of people trying to buy their way to heaven with good works and minimal faith, which they associated with the Catholic Church. In their eyes such behavior spelled total depravity, for God was not to be bargained with.
The Puritans' Calvinist beliefs were coupled with religious practices that made them distinctive within the Church of England. Although they believed it was necessary to have an educated ministry in order to help them understand the word of God, they also took considerable responsibility for understanding the Bible themselves. They read the Gospels on their own and formed study and prayer groups to encourage individual engagement with Scripture. Even though they believed that God's grace was offered only to God's freely chosen elect, their goal was to prepare themselves fully for the reception of grace if it should be offered to them, by intensely scrutinizing their
own souls and leading a life true to God's word. They favored ministers who could help them to understand God's word by giving biblically based sermons, and believed individual congregations should control the selection of those ministers. These practices put them at odds with some of the bishops in the Church of England, who favored more traditional forms of worship.
The ecclesiastical reforms which the Puritans wanted to put into practice would also encourage a sense of religious exclusivity. In England, everyone could take communion after confirmation by a bishop. The Puritans believed, however, that church membership should be limited to those who were truly among God's elect. Allowing the unregenerate to take communion was an affront to God. Given the structure of church governance within the Church of England, however, it was difficult to put this reform into practice in England. A few English churches had experimented with a congregational form of government, but most had only a hazy notion of what it required.
The Puritans' religious views also made them feel in some sense responsible for the moral behavior of their neighbors, a responsibility that would shape the kinds of governments they created in North America. Puritan ministers preached that every nation was bound by a covenant with God, and this covenant obligated them to enforce biblical laws on earth. A nation that fulfilled the terms of its covenant would prosper; a nation that failed to root out corruption and wickedness would be punished. Many Puritans during the 1620s worried that England had failed to fulfill its covenant, making God angry with their nation. Charles I, who had ascended to the throne in 1625, seemed determined to maintain an unreformed church by promoting high Anglicans like William Laud and sponsoring a return towards Anglican orthodoxy with the church. He had also married a Roman Catholic, Henrietta-Marie of France. These acts infuriated the Puritans.
Signs of God's apparent displeasure with England for its failure to live up to its covenant were not difficult to find. Widespread unemployment and economic distress in England's southeastern counties (caused by a depression in the textile industry during the 1620s) had made people behave in ways the Puritans considered ungodly and unchristian. The Protestant forces with whom the English had allied themselves suffered a number of severe defeats in Europe during the opening phases of the Thirty Years War. And although an assertive Puritan faction in Parliament had in the past been able to check the king's policies, in March 1629 Charles I dissolved Parliament, apparently determined to rule as an absolute monarch.
These apparent signs of God's displeasure provoked considerable debate within the newly formed Massachusetts Bay Company about what should be done. Although some of the shareholders wanted the company to be a normal trading venture, many others had a more spiritual end in view. Among the latter was a Suffolk squire from the village of Groton, John Winthrop. A justice of the peace and graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, Winthrop was typical of many Puritan gentry who were alarmed at the direction of events in England. Some early twentieth-century historians suggested that Winthrop was motivated by financial inducements to emigrate at this point, since not long before buying into the company he had been deprived of an attorneyship in the Court of Wards and Liveries.4 But the evidence makes such an interpretation implausible. By 1629, it was clear that colonization was a risky business. Raleigh had reputedly spent upwards of £40,000 on his various enterprises, and Winthrop would not have undertaken such a risky venture when he still had so much to lose at Groton. Religious belief clearly inspired his departure from England. Winthrop and the others believed that Armageddon was not far away and that all true believers must remove themselves before God visited his wrath upon the land. From a twenty-first-century perspective it is hard to appreciate the intensity of religious feeling among the population at large in this period, coupled with the prevailing sense that God was all-powerful and man merely a weak mortal. Religion helped to explain a harsh and rapidly changing world over which individuals had little control.
Figure 11 Miniature portrait of John Winthrop (1588–1649). Unidentified artist, circa 1630. Courtesy of Massachusetts Historical Society.
The religious faction formed a plan to take over the company and to emigrate to New England with the charter, where the company could avoid the prying eyes of the king's officials, notably the Anglican bishops. It was hoped that the company could slip away unnoticed, given the distance of America from England and the distractions of the Crown back home; it was not intended to disavow the English church or state but to make interference impossible. In pursuit of this dubious idea, they were aided by a remarkable oversight in the charter, which failed to specify that the company had to retain its headquarters in England. An agreement to buy out the non-Puritan elements was accordingly concluded at Cambridge, England, on August 26, 1629. Three days later the plan was accepted at a hastily convened meeting of the general court in London attended by just 27 freemen out of 125. Not long afterward Winthrop himself was elected governor.
Meanwhile, the process of launching the colony had already commenced. On the first formation of the company in 1628, a ship had been sent out to take possession of the remnants of the fishing settlement at Salem. The following April, the company had sent a further five ships carrying 200 additional settlers. Thus when the main group of the Puritans left in March 1630 in a fleet of 11 ships, they already had a substantial base on which to build. Unlike the Pilgrims, the Puritans had considerable financial resources; and, unlike the Virginia Company, they had realistic expectations, having learned from the experiences of their predecessors in Virginia and Plymouth.
The Arabella, with Winthrop on board, reached Salem in June, but since the location did not please the group's leaders, the main fleet went on to another site near the Charles River. It was here that they noticed a thin neck of land protruding into the bay and decided to make this site the focus of their new enterprise, not least because of its central position and defensive capabilities. They called it Boston after the town in Lincolnshire from which some of the emigrants had come. Before they landed Winthrop reminded the settlers on board the Arabella of their mission, which was to renew their collective covenant with God, restore the true church, and live according to God's laws. The new settlements were to “be as a city upon a hill,” an example to all the world.
As at Plymouth, the local Indians around Massachusetts Bay were fragmented and weak, predisposing them to welcome an alliance and trade with the English. Since the Puritans were far better financed and supplied than the first group of Pilgrims (and could rely on the support of Plymouth), they did not depend on local inhabitants for their very survival. However, they did need a way to pay off the creditors who had financed their voyage. The Puritans' two most populous neighbors, the Narragansetts and the Pequots, were eager to trade for the coveted European goods that their inland neighbors could obtain from the Dutch. Puritan leaders therefore established trading relations with both Indian nations. The Narragansetts and the Pequots could offer few furs but they could provide wampum, an ornament made in large quantities by the native inhabitants around the Long Island and southern Connecticut coasts from the abundant supply of oyster shells that could be found there. Wampum belts had two colors: white represented peace and health; purple implied war and death. Highly valued by the northeastern tribes because of their fine workmanship and symbolic significance, wampum belts could be exchanged with northern peoples like the Abenakis for furs.
Since they planned to create a colony of settlement rather than a trading colony, the Puritans also needed land, which appeared to be conveniently available. Unaware that the Indians had been decimated by disease, Massachusetts leaders managed to convince themselves that the Indians who lived there had left the land empty and barren. They cited the international legal doctrine of vacuum domicilium, which provided that men who used land productively had a greater right to it than those who simply occupied it. “As the ancient patriarchs therefore removed from straiter places into more roomy where the land lay idle, and none use it, though there dwelt inhabitants
by them … so it is lawful now to take a land which none useth, and make use of it.” Indians, the Puritans argued, did not “use” the land productively, and so had no right to keep it from those who would.5
Despite such beliefs, the Puritans generally purchased the Indians' land since they wanted no legal complications in the settling of their commonwealth. It would not do for Puritan leaders to cause an uprising among the Indians, or to reveal an inability to control them. However, these purchases meant something different to each of the parties. The English assumed on the basis of English law that their purchases of Indian land included exclusive rights to use the land and everything on it, including game and fish in perpetuity. The Indians for their part assumed that in selling land they were merely sealing friendships and sharing the land with their allies. Their different conceptions of property would later cause bitter disputes, but for the time being relations proceeded smoothly.