The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America: The Conflict of Civilizations, 1600-1675

by Bernard Bailyn

  THAT BLEAK RIVERSIDE CLEARING—long since renamed Whorekill—would soon again be the scene of ruin and destruction. But for a fleeting moment—a year, more or less—Plockhoy’s obscure, huddled, evanescent settlement lit up brilliantly the possibilities and dangers of life in North America for those who hoped to live apart from the world, to achieve ideal, rational lives, free of corruption, and to be a beacon for aspiring humanity. In this most unlikely spot, witnessed by a few rustic Swedes and Finns, some traders from Maryland, and an occasional wandering Indian, Plockhoy’s people would, they hoped, begin the transformation of the world, according to a plan elaborately designed by their leader.

  The project that deposited this small group of believers on the lower Delaware had had a long gestation. Plockhoy, born about 1620, had known from childhood the passions of Protestant millenarianism, the soaring utopianism and ecstatic visions that marked the efforts of religious radicals to complete the work of the Reformation and restore Christianity to its apostolic simplicity. It had been in his native Zierikzee, the small commercial center of Zeeland in the far southwest of the Netherlands, that he had been touched by the fierce Biblicism and spirituality of the Mennonites and Anabaptists and had accepted their worldly asceticism, their principles of adult baptism, pacifism, non-participation in civil government, and personal responsibility for finding the way to God’s grace. But he remained neutral in the theological battles that split the Dutch Mennonite community, and turned with increasing interest to the “Collegiant” philosophy of his fellow townsman, Galenus Abrahams de Haan, a prophetic herald of a new spiritual regime. Like Galenus, Plockhoy came to seek a loose spiritual life guided not by doctrine or credal discipline but by enlightened ideas and personal conscience.52

  The Collegiants in Amsterdam were not an organized sect but a convocation of various Christian groups who met together in Quaker-like gatherings to discuss scripture and the spiritual life. Their passion for religious freedom led them to a concern for social justice and, in Plockhoy’s case, to a search for a comprehensive program that would embrace “freedom of speech, absolute tolerance, and a universal Christendom.” Like Galenus, Plockhoy probed the inner structure of “the ideal Christian commonwealth of love, equality, and freedom,” testing his ideas in a society of poets who formed what they called “Parnassus on the Y,”* some of whom would later write verses in support of his Delaware venture. With them, at the tavern they called “Sweet Rest” and that they thought of as an “art-school for the promotion of virtue,” he discussed such meaningful and soul-searching questions as the abolition of “too deeply rooted customs,” the possibility of an inclusive Christian “sheeps fold” that would embrace all sects, and the rights and wrongs of polygamy.53

  By the 1650s Plockhoy was in search of a worldly venue for the Christian perfectionist ideas he was developing, some way to realize his utopian ideals. Inevitably he came into contact with that pan-European virtuoso of messianic reform, Samuel Hartlib, a Polish Prussian who had become a leader in the reformist ferment in republican England. Abandoning family and home, Plockhoy joined the self-appointed “universal secretary of the union of good men” in England, circulated among the English intelligentsia, and in time, in the final years of the Interregnum, found his way into the court of Oliver Cromwell. In those last months of the great man’s regime, foundering though it was, a galaxy of social critics and prophetic seers was renewing the effort to realize the millennial aspirations of the early years of England’s Revolution, when models of universal reform of all kinds had kindled hope for the transformation of the world and the proximate redemption of mankind. In 1657 and 1658 that earlier euphoria glowed once again, carrying forward into the late 1650s the utopian influences of Bacon’s New Atlantis, Hartlib’s Kingdom of Macaria, Comenius’s prophetic tracts, and other, more ephemeral writings of the euphoric 1640s. In that world of soaring aspirations, the obscure, transported Zeelander flourished.54

  He quickly managed to meet “God’s Englishman” himself, and in a series of conversations (“I was heard several times with patience”) Plockhoy urged Cromwell, failing in health though he was, to undertake the wholesale reformation of England as the first step in the rebirth of mankind, according to a few basic principles. There should be in England, he counseled the Lord Protector, a universal Christian state. Christian groups in every community should assemble together, in rooms where, seated, they could face each other, for regular, nondoctrinaire scripture readings. There should be an end to all “lording over consciences,” and all ties of church and state and all tithes should be abolished. There should be total toleration for all Christian peoples, free of any support or influence by the financial or physical force of the state, whose only role would be to suppress, if necessary, all efforts of some to dominate others. In this situation most differences of doctrine or opinion would become reconciled, but if not, they should be left as they were, to be settled, if at all, at a later time. If Cromwell were to realize such a program in England, Plockhoy felt certain that “Holland, Denmark, Sweden, France and other kingdoms … will easily be brought to a firm bond of unity.”

  It may well have been that Cromwell was interested, but his death in September 1658 “obstructed” Plockhoy in his proceeding—though only temporarily. Four months later the Dutchman laid out the same ideas in an extensive letter to Parliament, enclosing two letters he had written to Cromwell, all of which he published in a pamphlet entitled The Way to the Peace and Settlement of These Nations, aimed “to awaken the publick spirits in England.” And he followed that production with yet another letter along the same line, addressed to the new Lord Protector, Richard Cromwell.55

  Though by the spring of 1659 nothing had yet come of his efforts, Plockhoy was only warming to the task of designing a utopian world. Social and economic ills were as much on his mind as religious oppression. He had ended his discourse to Parliament with the words, “Give ear to the poor, for the cry of them is exceeding great in these nations,” and it was to that theme that he devoted himself in his next publication.

  The message of that remarkable “treatise”—a plan for an ideal, Christian, semicommunistic community that anticipated the later Delaware settlement—is entirely contained in its sprawling title: A Way Propounded To Make the Poor in These and Other Nations Happy, by Bringing Together a Fit, Sutable, and Well-Qualified People into One Household-government, or Little Common-wealth, Wherein Every One May Keep His Propriety, and Be Imployed in Some Work or Other, As He Shall Be Fit, without Being Oppressed. Being the Way Not Only To Rid These and Other Nations From Idle, Evil, and Disorderly Persons, but Also from All Such As Have Sought and Found Out Many Inventions, To Live upon the Labour of Others. The title concluded with the words of the Psalms, “Blessed Is He That Considereth the Poor … He Shall Be Blessed upon the Earth.” And annexed to the pamphlet was a separate little publication entitled An Invitation to This Society, or Little Common-wealth…, which reflected a major shift in Plockhoy’s thinking.

  He had come to realize that he and his adherents might well prove to be “insufferable to the world, and [the world might] be incorrigible or unbetterable as to us.” Therefore he and his people might have to “reduce our friendship and society to a few in number, and maintain it in such places as are separate from other men, where we may with less impediment or hindrance love one another and mind the wonders of God, eating the bread we shall earn with our own hands.”56

  He might indeed have thought that his ideas would be found insufferable by the world at large and that he and his brethren would have to withdraw to some remote spot in order properly to mind God’s wonders. For his social and economic ideas were radical by any measure. The evils of inequality and disorder, he wrote, were everywhere. Not only do malevolent governors, greedy merchants, and lazy, idle, and negligent ministers bring slavery and thralldom to the common people everywhere, but ordinary artisans and laborers, to escape work, lie and deceive, throwing the burden of creative work on honest people.
Let people join hands in brotherhood, he wrote, in righteousness and love. In the conventicles he now contemplated there would be a sharing of life’s work with clear divisions of labor among farmers, artisans (seventy-two types were listed), mariners, and masters of arts and sciences. Specialization, hence interdependence, would increase; superiority in status would be temporary, revolving with the cycles of work; and in all things there would be a sharing of skills and experience for mutual benefit. Though private property would be preserved, there would be a pooling of effort in agriculture and industry as in education and management, and all of life would be carefully regulated by mutually agreed-on rules.

  None of this, he assured his readers, was mere speculation. The first “little common-wealth,” he wrote, was already in operation near London, and there were plans for more such settlements in Bristol and Ireland, where land and building materials were cheap. Applications were invited via Giles Calvert, who was also an agent for the Levellers. In the second edition of the pamphlet interested people were told where and when they might get in touch directly with Plockhoy himself. Nor were his schemes without prominent backers. Hartlib actively supported the cause and sent copies of A Way Propounded to the scientist John Beal, who approved of beginning Christian reform “in small models”; probably also to John Milton, whose views were not dissimilar on some points; and to Cambridge University’s vice-chancellor, John Worthington, a major figure in reform circles, with whom Hartlib explored the similarity of Plockhoy’s plans to the Hutterite conventicles in Hungary and Transylvania. Plockhoy himself referred to the similarities with the Hutterites, whose work he knew through the Dutch Mennonites if not through Comenius, then resident in Amsterdam.57

  But fate once again blasted Plockhoy’s hopes. Within a year of the publication of A Way Propounded Charles II was restored to the throne of England, and the reform era of the Protectorate came to an end. But Plockhoy pressed on, turning quickly to the possibility of a continental venue. In October 1660 he was reported to be leading a group to a safe territory in Germany, near Cologne, and a year after that he was back in his native Holland preparing to bring his campaign for justice, equality, and righteousness to a final, radical conclusion.

  He had long known of New Netherland generally and of the Swanendael/Whorekill spot specifically. His friend Jacob Steendam, a member of the Parnassan club at the Sweet Rest tavern, had lived and prospered in the colony for a decade after 1652 and celebrated its wonders and vast potential, first in a 104-line rhapsodic poem, “The Complaint of New Amsterdam,” and then in a metaphor-choked lyric of 288 lines, “The Praise of New Netherland,” calculated to encourage emigration to that “noblest land of all,” whose perfumed air was like that of the fields of Eden.

  Nor turf, nor dried manure,—within your doors,

  Nor coal, extracted from earth’s secret stores;

  Nor sods, uplifted from the barren moors,

  For fuel given;

  Which, with foul stench the brain intoxicate;

  And thus, by the foul gas which they create,

  The intellects of man, wise and great,

  Men are out-driven.

  Plockhoy was probably present when Steendam declaimed this rhapsody to the assembled Parnassans, but he had other reasons for believing that Whorekill could become the promised land.58

  His brother Harmen in his late teens had moved to the colony and had served as a soldier in the small fort near Whorekill. Harmen probably knew Steendam in Manhattan, and he too urged his brother to consider the possibilities of settling on the scene of the Swanendael massacre. With such detailed information and encouragement from his friend and fellow Parnassan and from his own brother, and with the Amsterdam merchants actively promoting emigration to New Amstel, Plockhoy began to think seriously of building his new Jerusalem on the Delaware. The place, a virtual paradise according to Steendam, seemed perfectly to satisfy his desire for a settlement “separate from other men.” And in addition he had renewed his old contacts with Amsterdam’s Mennonites, who too were seeking a refuge from the pressures and corruptions of the world.

  Between 1661 and 1663 Plockhoy led the Mennonites in an extended series of negotiations with the Amsterdam authorities in which he explained his heart’s desires. In seven letters written between November 1661 and May 1662, Plockhoy requested a land grant at Whorekill and a charter for a settlement for “the relief of many aggrieved and languishing families.” In his colony there would have to be a “universal” church with no clergymen, laymen reading the scripture in rotation. The people would have to be free of tithes and have full civil though not criminal jurisdiction, the free exercise of all trades and crafts, total liberty of religion, and equality in political participation. Plockhoy’s fourth letter was crucial. It listed 117 articles of association, in effect a constitution, that created a completely democratic regime. Equality of status and role would be the key to popular government. Every adult male would have to pledge never to “strive for any special power” and never quarrel over religion; and “the weaker members will always be protected as much as possible from oppression by the stronger ones.” Laws would be enacted by two-thirds majority of votes of the people cast in ballots and enforced by a single popularly elected magistrate distinguished for “means, intelligence, and knowledge.” The number of public servants, all of them accountable to the public, would increase only with the growth of the population. Mennonites were to be exempted from military service and from voting on military matters. People were to work together, in common, for the public good, for five years, laboring for no more than six hours daily. After that period the land and other property would be divided into parcels of private ownership by lot.59

  This would be a welfare society: the sick, rich or poor, would have public health care; “all impotent men, women, and children”—the needy, orphans, sick, and old—would be looked after by the public. Youths would be counseled on marriage, and all quarrels, however personal, would be submitted to public servants for resolution. Troublemakers—stubborn slanderers and unruly quarrelers and such false believers as “obstinate papists…, parasitic Jews, Anglican headstrong Quakers and Puritans, and rash and stupid believers in the millenium…[and] present-day pretenders to revelation”—all these, who would threaten the basic toleration and rationality, would be counseled, and if necessary expelled by legal process. And well-disposed people who lived nearby, outside the community, would be treated with kindness so that they might be “saved from becoming degraded, and will become instead worthwhile members of our society.”60

  In April and June 1662 the burgomasters of Amsterdam granted Plockhoy and the Mennonites loans of passage money, cash subventions to settle on the Whorekill, and a contract to legalize the settlement. In October all the papers were published together in an eighty-four-page pamphlet, Brief Account of New Netherlands Situation … and Peculiar Suitability for Colonization…, which Plockhoy introduced with a discourse on what had turned out to be the most controversial issue that his utopian scheme had raised.

  What did he mean by equality? Did he mean to abolish all differences among people—to level the whole society? For people familiar with the threatening claims of the Levellers, the Fifth Monarchy Men, the Diggers, and assorted radical agitators and for whom the memories of late medieval peasant rebellions were still fresh, this was an overwhelmingly important question, which Plockhoy struggled to answer. Equality, he insisted, was indeed to be the basis of his new society, but “we hope nobody will be so naive, much less malevolent, as to think … that we are attempting to remove all differences between people.” Each person will always have special qualities, “comprising a universe in himself.” Only a fool would try to confine everyone to a rigid, narrow set of rules without considering what they needed for their particular well-being. Yes, there must be general rules for the common welfare, but not such as to restrict anyone’s “personal and natural liberty.” If individuality is suppressed, it will surely, in the end, break out violentl
y. The equality he sought as the basis for “a stable Christian civilian society, republic, or commonwealth” must be an equality among people, some of whom would be more intelligent than others, some more wealthy than others, some rulers and some ruled, some male and some female. But then, if there were to be these traditional differences between rich and poor, rulers and ruled, where was the equality? The equality, he wrote, lay in eliminating “all domineering amongst members of the society, or exercise of force…[and] all complacent obedience, such as in the Roman Catholic way of imposing upon us, freedom loving Dutchmen.” In other words, he sought to eliminate not the natural differences among people and the differences in the rewards of their personal accomplishments, but the differences created and maintained by force and intimidation—the arbitrary differences shaped by the dead hand of custom, the church, or sheer force imposed on subservient people.61

  But Plockhoy was not finished explaining. In the summer of 1662 he circulated his last publication, his Brief and Concise Plan. It was essentially a recruitment pamphlet, but it was also a miscellany of documents. It contained a copy of Plockhoy’s contract with the city of Amsterdam, a sonnet by one of the Parnassan group, Karel ver Loove, on the Netherlands’ motto, “Union Makes Strength”; and an eleven-stanza poem by Steendam praising the colony as “the flow’r, the noblest of all lands … a pleasure garden” on the banks of the Delaware. There were also instructions on practical arrangements. But most important, there was a reprise of Plockhoy’s conception of an ideal commonwealth.62