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Title: Essays in American history
Author: Henry Ferguson
Release date: October 20, 2023 [eBook #71922]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: James Pott and Company, 1894
Credits: Carla Foust and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
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Transcriber’s Notes
Italic text is enclosed in _underscores_. Superscripts are indicated by
a caret ^ symbol; when a superscript is longer than one character, it
is enclosed in curly brackets, e.g., w^{th}.
Additional notes will be found near the end of this ebook.
ESSAYS
IN
AMERICAN HISTORY
BY
HENRY FERGUSON, M. A.
_Northam Professor of History and Political Science in
Trinity College, Hartford._
NEW YORK
JAMES POTT AND COMPANY
114 FIFTH AVENUE.
COPYRIGHT, 1894,
BY
JAMES POTT & CO.
CONTENTS.
I.
THE QUAKERS IN NEW ENGLAND 9
II.
THE WITCHES 61
III.
SIR EDMUND ANDROS 111
IV.
THE LOYALISTS 161
PREFACE.
These essays are presented to the public in the belief that though what
they contain be old, it is worth telling again, and in the hope that
by viewing the early history of the country from a somewhat different
stand-point from that commonly taken, light may be thrown upon places
which have been sometimes left in shadow.
The time has been when it was considered a duty to praise every action
of the resolute men who were the early settlers of New England. In the
glow of an exultant patriotism which was unwilling to see anything but
beauty in the annals of their country, and in a spirit of reverence
which made them shrink from observing their fathers’ shortcomings, the
early historians of the United States dwelt lovingly on the bright
side of the colonial life, and passed over its shadows with filial
reticence. It is evident that no true conception of any period is
possible when so studied, and it is a matter for congratulation that at
the present day the subject can be treated with greater impartiality,
and that it is no longer necessary for American writers to make up for
the political and literary insignificance of their country by boasting
either of the vastness of their continent or of the Spartan virtue of
their forefathers.
In the same manner, in earlier days, when the recollection of the
struggle for independence was still vivid, patriotic Americans were
unable to recognize anything but arbitrary tyranny in the attempts
made from time to time by the English government to give unity and
organization to the group of discordant and feeble settlements, or
to see anything but what was base and servile in the sentiments that
inspired those whom they nicknamed Tories. Now, under the influence of
calmer consideration, men are beginning to admit that something may
be said for men like Andros, who strove against the separatist spirit
which seemed to New England to be the very essence of liberty, and even
for those unfortunates who valued the connection with Great Britain
more than they did the privileges of self-government, and who were
compelled in grief and sorrow, from their devotion to their principles,
to leave forever the homes they loved. The war of secession has taught
Americans to understand the term, and appreciate the sentiment, of
loyalty. It is no longer an unmeaning word, fit only to be ridiculed
in scurrilous doggerel by patriot rhymsters, as was the case a hundred
years ago, but appeals to an answering chord in the heart of every man
who remembers the quick heart-beats and the grand enthusiasm of those
four years of struggle, the true heroic age of American history.
The paper upon _The Quakers in New England_ is an enlargement and
revision of an article printed in the _American Church Review_, in
April 1889, and that upon _Sir Edmund Andros_ has been printed by the
_Historical Society of Westchester County, N. Y._, before whom it was
read in October 1892, but it has been revised and enlarged. Instead of
burdening the pages with notes and references, they have been placed
together after each essay, so that they may be readily used by those
who desire to do so, and yet may not affront the eyes of those who do
not desire them.
It is impossible to give credit for every statement to every historian
who may have made it; it has been the desire of the author to indicate
his principal sources of information, and he has not knowingly omitted
any work upon which he has relied for the historical facts presented.
TRINITY COLLEGE, HARTFORD,
October 1894.
I.
THE QUAKERS IN NEW ENGLAND.
In the year 1656, in the midst of the period of the Commonwealth, the
good people of Massachusetts, who were enjoying a brief season of rest
after their troubles with the Baptists and the Antinomians, heard to
their horror that they were likely to be visited by certain fanatics of
whom they had heard from their brethren in England. These were known
to them by the invidious name of Quakers, and were confounded with
Adamites, Muggletonians, and Ranters, strangely named sects which the
confusion of the times had brought forth.[1]
This remarkable body of men, whose history has presented such strange
contrasts of wild enthusiasm and imperturbable stolidity, of fanaticism
and quietism, of contempt for the world and its rewards on the one
side, and of sordid love of peace and money-getting upon the other,
had recently come into being as one of the natural results of the
unsettling of religious faiths and practices which had accompanied the
political revolution in England. The Quaker movement was a revolt at
once from the enforced conformity of the Laudian establishment and from
the intolerable spiritual oppression of the Calvinistic divines, whose
little fingers, when they came into power, had been thicker than the
loins of their predecessors.
The great Anglican prelates of the reign of Charles I. were unfortunate
in the circumstances amidst which their lives were spent. They were
liberal and tolerant in theology, and they were pilloried as bigots;
they held an idea of what the Church of England should be, that was
utopian in its comprehensiveness, and they are described by every New
England writer of school histories or children’s story-books as narrow
minded enemies of freedom of thought. The system proposed by Andrewes
and Montague was essentially that of Sir Thomas More: liberality in
matters of belief, with uniformity in practice and in ritual. The
Puritan divines, on the other hand, were despotic in matters of faith
and doctrine to a degree rarely equalled in the history of the human
mind, while they insisted upon their right of refusing the system
of worship which was established by law in the Church of England,
and of choosing for themselves religious ordinances to suit their
own tastes and fancies. They did not plead for liberty on the ground
that the principle of compulsion in religious matters was wrong and
illegitimate, but because the services of the Church of England were,
in their opinion, unscriptural if not idolatrous. The one party was
tolerant in doctrine, and despotic, tyrannical at times, in matters
of ritual; the other claimed to be indifferent as to ritual, but was
despotic in opinions. The church, by attempting to regulate public
worship, was led in some instances to appear to be persecuting men for
doctrinal differences; the Puritans, from their zeal for orthodoxy
in doctrine, became, when the power was placed in their hands, the
strictest possible disciplinarians. The tendency of the one party was
to subject the church to the state, and thus make it an instrument of
political authority; the other tended to the subjection of the state
to the church, making the civil authority little more than the body
by which the edicts of the ministers should be registered and their
decrees should be enforced.
With the early history of Quakerism we have little to do. Its founder,
George Fox, was the son of a weaver at Fenny Drayton (or Drayton in
the Clay) in Leicestershire. He had been piously brought up by his
parents, who were members of the Church of England, and passed a
boyhood and youth of singular purity and innocence. When he was growing
up to manhood he passed through a period of deep religious depression,
and found no help from any of his friends or from the ministers of
the parish churches in his neighborhood (who at this time were mainly
Presbyterians) or from the newer lights of the rising separatist
bodies. One counselled him to have blood let, another to use tobacco
and sing psalms; and the poor distracted boy, whose soul was heavy
with a sense of the wrath of God, found no comfort from any of them.
A careful study of the Bible made him quick to see the weak points
in the systems that surrounded him, and at last he found the comfort
he sought in the sense of an immediate communion with God and an
indwelling of the Spirit of Christ within the soul. For a time he led a
solitary life, leaving home and friends and wandering over the country
on foot, clothed in garments of leather, sleeping wherever he could
find a lodging, and spending whole days sometimes in the hollows of
great trees. Soon it was “borne in upon him” that the presence of the
Spirit and the inner light was as good a qualification for the office
of preacher as that of being a graduate of Oxford or Cambridge, and he
began his public ministry about the year 1646.[2]
With the externals of Quakerism we are all familiar: the morbid
conscientiousness that forbade the use of the common forms of courtesy,
the simple dress, the refusal to submit to the authority of magistrates
or of priests in matters concerning religion, and the unwillingness to
pay them the usual compliments due to their position. The true inner
nature of Quakerism, which gave it its strength, lay not merely in
its abhorrence of forms and formulas, its vigorous protest against
any compulsion in matters either of religious thought or religious
observance, but essentially in its consciousness of the need of the
Divine presence and its belief in the fulfilment of the Saviour’s
promise to send his Spirit into the world.
It was a faith for martyrs and enthusiasts, a faith which in its simple
earnestness had wonderful power of conviction, but which was especially
liable to counterfeits and pretenders, who could delude themselves or
others into a belief in their inspiration, and who substituted a wild
extravagance for the enthusiasm of the first believers. One cannot help
regretting that Fox’s fate placed him in so uncongenial a century as
the seventeenth and in so matter-of-fact a country as England. Had he
been born in Italy in the middle ages, his name might rank with that of
Francis of Assisi. But it was impossible to expect comprehensiveness
or liberality from the Puritans of the day, all the less because of
the abuses and fanatical actions by which Quakerism was parodied and
made ridiculous. It was essentially an esoteric religion, and had, in
consequence, the great disadvantage of being able to furnish no tests
by which the true could be distinguished from the false, those inspired
with a genuine religious enthusiasm from the fanatics and pretenders.
Their revolt from all established customs and usages, their disrespect
for authority, and the boldness with which they rebuked and disputed
with the preacher in the pulpit of the “steeple house” or with the
justice on the bench, brought them at once into difficulties with the
rulers in church and state, who showed themselves no more tolerant of
dissent from their own favorite way of thinking and acting than were
the most despotic of all the Anglican prelates. They were imprisoned,
fined, beaten, and exiled; in 1656 Fox computed that there were seldom
less than a thousand Quakers in prison at once. They seemed inspired
with a spirit of opposition; wherever they were not wanted, there were
they sure to go. They visited Scotland and Ireland, the West India
islands and the American colonies; one woman testified before the Grand
Turk at Adrianople, two others were imprisoned by the Inquisition at
Malta; one brother visited Jerusalem and bore his testimony against the
superstition of the monks, others made their way to Rome, Austria, and
Hungary, and a number of them preached their doctrines in Holland and
Germany.[3] Such enthusiasm, even in those in whom it was genuine, was
very nearly akin to insanity; and in many instances the dividing line
was crossed, and the votaries allowed themselves to commit grotesque
and indecent actions, or to speak most shocking blasphemies and to
receive an idolatrous veneration from the silly women who listened to
their ravings. The disturbances of the times produced many other bands
of fanatics who were frequently confounded with the Quakers, and gave
to them the odium of their misdeeds. The Ranters, the Adamites, the
Muggletonians, and the Fifth Monarchy Men were all akin to the Quakers
in being opposed to the order established by law, and in professing
to be guided by an inner light; they differed from them, however, in
making their religious fanaticism very often a cloak for secret vice
or for wild plots against the government. The temporary overthrow of
the comprehensive church establishment of the judicious statesmen and
reformers of Elizabeth’s reign had opened the gates to a flood of
irreligion and fanaticism. The ecclesiastical despotism established
by the Westminster Assembly was more repugnant to Englishmen than the
old church which had been suppressed, and the condition of England
in religious matters during the Commonwealth forms one of the best
apologies for the severe reactionary measures that were adopted when
the king and the bishops were restored in 1660.
It was in the middle of this period that the episode of the Quaker
troubles in New England occurred, an episode which has been given an
unpleasant prominence in the colonial history of New England, partly
from the bitterness of the feelings which were aroused on both sides,
but especially from the bearing that it had upon the question of
the people of Massachusetts for the powers and responsibilities of
self-government. The story is a sad one of misdirected earnestness
and zeal on the one side, of mistaken consistency and fidelity to
principle, however false, upon the other. We condemn while we admire;
we wonder at the steadiness and constancy of both judged and judges,
while we regret the tragic results that stained the new commonwealth
with innocent blood. It is not surprising, however, that such a
conflict took place, for as a recent writer of great learning and
ability has well said of the relations of the Quakers and their
opponents,--“the issue presented seemed to have a resemblance to the
mechanical problem of what will be the effect if an irresistible body
strikes an immovable body.”[4]
The colonial governments which had been established in New England in
the first half of the seventeenth century were not, as is frequently
assumed, homogeneous and similar, but differed from each other in their
political status and to some extent in their political institutions,
and very greatly in the spirit which governed and directed them.
Massachusetts had a charter obtained from the Crown for a trading
company, and transferred to the colony by a daring usurpation; Rhode
Island had a charter granted by the Long Parliament; Plymouth had
obtained its territory by purchase from the old Plymouth Company,
but its political existence was winked at rather than recognized;
Connecticut and New Haven were, to all intents and purposes,
independent republics, save for a somewhat doubtful acknowledgment
of the supremacy of the king and of the Commonwealth that was his
successor. All but Rhode Island were joined together in a federal
league for mutual defence against external and internal enemies.
The circumstances of the settlement of the various colonies had been
such as to render the colonists extremely tenacious of their own
privileges, and extremely jealous of any interference from the other
side of the ocean. The people of Massachusetts, especially, lived in
constant dread of their much-prized charter being taken away from them
by the king, from whom it had been obtained, or by the parliament,
which considered that it was its province to meddle with and to
regulate all things in heaven and on earth.
It is quite remarkable that the attitude of the colonies to the home
government, during the period of the Commonwealth, no less than in
the years which preceded it, was one of jealous suspicion. The charter
colonies feared that their privileges would be interfered with, the
self-organized colonies were in dread of a _quo warranto_ or a _scire
facias_, which would disclose the irregularity of their organizations
or the defectiveness of their titles.
The godly and judicious Winthrop, the statesmanlike founder and
governor of Massachusetts, had died, sorrowing on his death-bed for
the harshness in religious matters into which he had been forced; and
in his place was the severe and fanatical Endicott, a man of gloomy
intensity of nature, a stern logician, a man who neither asked nor
granted mercy. The clergy were fanatically devoted to their religious
and political peculiarities, and were inferior in wisdom and judgment
to the great leader who had come out from England with the early
settlers at the beginning of the colony. Cotton was dead, and was
succeeded in his office of teacher by John Norton, who differed from
his predecessor by the lack of the principal characteristics which had
so greatly distinguished him: “Profound judgment, eminent gravity,
Christian candor, and sweet temper of spirit, whereby he could very
placidly bear those who differed from him in other apprehensions.”[5]
Hooker had long since removed to Connecticut, where he had been largely
instrumental in founding a more genial commonwealth upon a broader and
more liberal basis. Wilson, the first pastor of the church at Boston,
was indeed still living, but was a worthy associate of Endicott and
Norton, and distinguished then, as he had always been, rather by zeal
than by either discretion or Christian charity.
By a process of successful exclusions and banishments the community
had been rendered tolerably homogeneous, or at least submissive to the
theocratical system which had been established. Those who had been
defeated in the struggle for existence had gone elsewhere to found new
commonwealths, all with a greater amount of religious liberty than that
of Massachusetts.
The first we hear of the Quakers in New England is in an order of the
General Court appointing May 14, 1656, as a public day of humiliation,
“to seek the face of God in behalf of our native country, in reference
to the abounding of errors, especially those of the Ranters and
Quakers.”[6]
About two months later a ship arrived from Barbadoes, bringing as
passengers two Quaker women, Mary Fisher and Ann Austin. As soon as
they arrived in the harbor, the Governor, the Deputy Governor, and
four assistants met and ordered that the captain of the ship should
be compelled to carry them back to Barbadoes; that in the mean time
they should be kept in jail, and the books which they had brought with
them should be burnt. During imprisonment they were subjected to great
indignities and insults at the hands of the brutal jailer, apparently
without warrant, being stripped naked and their bodies examined for
witch-marks, with attending circumstances of great indecency. They
were half-starved in prison, and then after a detention of about a
month they were sent away. No sooner had they gone when another vessel
arrived from England, bringing eight more, four men and four women,
besides one man from Long Island, who had been converted during the
voyage. Officers were sent on board the vessel, and the Quakers were
taken at once to the jail, where they were kept eleven weeks, and
then sent back to England, despite the protests of the shipmaster.[7]
During their detention they were examined before the magistrates, and
they increased the abhorrence in which they were held by their rude
and contemptuous answers, which gave the authorities a sufficient
excuse for keeping them in prison. Their books were burned; and though
some pains seems to have been taken to convince them of their errors
by argument, it was in vain. One of the women, Mary Prince by name,
made herself particularly obnoxious by the eloquence of her abuse.
She reviled the governor from the window of the prison, denouncing
the judgment of God upon him, wrote violent letters to him and to the
magistrates, and when the ministers attempted to argue with her, she
drove them from her as “hirelings, deceivers of the people, priests of
Baal, the seed of the serpent, the brood of Ishmael, etc.”
While this second batch of Quakers was in prison, the Federal
Commissioners were in session, and resolved to propose to the several
General Courts that all Quakers, Ranters, and other notorious heretics
should be prohibited coming into the United Colonies, and if any
should hereafter come or arise, that they should be forthwith secured
or removed out of all the jurisdictions.[8] These recommendations
were acted upon by all the General Courts at their next sessions: by
Connecticut, October 2, 1656; Massachusetts, October 14, 1656; New
Haven, May 27, 1657; Plymouth, June 3, 1657.
In Massachusetts the action of the General Court was most decided and
severe. Shipmasters who brought Quakers into the jurisdiction were to
be fined one hundred pounds, and to give security for the return of
such passengers to the port from which they came. Quakers coming to the
colony were to be “forthwith committed to the House of Correction, and
at their entrance to be severely whipped, and by the master thereof to
be kept constantly at work, and none suffered to converse or speak with
them during the time of their imprisonment.” A fine of five pounds was
imposed upon the importation, circulation, or concealment of Quaker
books; persons presuming to defend heretical opinions of the said
Quakers should be fined two pounds for the first offence, four pounds
for the second; for the third offence should be sent to the House of
Correction till they could be conveniently sent out of the colony; and
what person or persons soever should revile the officer or person of
magistrates or ministers, “as was usual with the Quakers,” should be
severely whipped, or pay the sum of five pounds.[9]
It was not long before the law was put into operation. The first cases
were Ann Burden and Mary Dyer. They were imprisoned for two or three
months, and then Burden, after having all of her little property taken
from her in fines and jail charges, was sent back to England, and Dyer
was delivered to her husband, the Secretary of Rhode Island, upon his
giving security not to lodge her in any town in the colony nor permit
any to speak with her.[10]
Mary Clarke, however, who had come from England “to warn these
persecutors to desist from their iniquity,” was whipped, receiving
twenty stripes with a whip of three cords, knotted at the ends. Charles
Holden and John Copeland, who had been sent away the year before,
returned to the colony, and were whipped thirty stripes apiece and
imprisoned, and Lawrence and Cassandra Southwick were imprisoned and
fined for harboring them. Richard Dowdney, who arrived from England to
bear his testimony, was scourged and imprisoned, and, together with
Holden and Copeland, was reshipped to England.[11]
The authorities now thought that their laws were too lenient, and in
October 1657 they were made more rigorous. The fine for entertaining
Quakers was increased to forty shillings an hour, and any Quaker
returning into the jurisdiction after being once punished, if a man,
was to lose one ear, and on a second appearance to lose the other.
If he appeared a third time, his tongue was to be bored through with
a red-hot iron. Women were to be whipped for the first and second
offences, and to have their tongues bored upon the third.[12] In May of
the following year, a penalty of ten shillings was laid upon every one
attending a Quaker meeting, and five pounds upon any one speaking at
such meeting.[13]
In spite of these severe enactments the Quakers returned; and the
more they were persecuted, the more they appeared to aspire to the
distinction of martyrdom. Holden, Copeland, and John Rouse, in 1658,
had their right ears cut off; but the magistrates were afraid of the
effect upon the people of a public execution of the law, and hence
inflicted the penalty in private, inside the walls of the prison, in
spite of the protest of the unfortunates, after which they were again
flogged and dismissed.[14] In October 1658 a further step was taken
in accordance with the advice of the Federal Commissioners, who met
in Boston in September, and the penalty of death was threatened upon
all who, after being banished from the jurisdiction under pain of
death if they returned, should again come back.[15] Massachusetts was
the only colony to take this step, which indeed was carried in the
meeting of the Commissioners by her influence against the protest of
Winthrop of Connecticut; and the measure was passed by a bare majority
of the General Court after long debate, and with the express proviso
that trial under this act should be by special jury, and not before
the magistrates alone. Captain Edward Hutchinson and Captain Thomas
Clark, men whose names should be remembered, desired leave to enter
their dissent from the law. The Court was urged on to this unfortunate
action by a petition from twenty-five of the citizens of Boston, among
whom we find the name of John Wilson, the pastor of the First Church.
These represented that the “incorrigibleness” of the Quakers after
all the means that had been taken was such “as by reason of their
malignant obdurities, daily increaseth rather than abateth our fear
of the Spirit of Muncer and John of Leyden renewed, and consequently
of some destructive evil impending,” and asked whether the law of
self-preservation did not require the adoption of a law to punish
these offenders with death.[16] In order to justify its action, the
Court ordered that there should be “a writing or declaration drawn up
and forthwith printed to manifest the evils of the teachings of the
Quakers and danger of their practices, as tending to the subversion
of religion, of church order, and civil government, and the necessity
that this government is put upon for the preservation of religion
and their own peace and safety, to exclude such persons from among
them, who after due means of conviction should remain obstinate and
pertinacious.”[17] This declaration was composed by John Norton, and
printed at public expense.[18]
The rulers of the colony had now committed themselves to a position
from which they could not recede without loss of dignity, and which
they could not enforce without great obloquy. They evidently were under
the impression that the mere passage of the law would be enough, and
that they would never be obliged to proceed to the last extremity. But
they miscalculated the perseverance and enthusiasm of the men with
whom they had to deal, and were soon involved in a conflict of will
from which there seemed to them to be no escape except by putting the
law into effect. It would have been better for them to have heeded
the wise advice that they had already received from Rhode Island,
whose magistrates had replied to one of the former communications of
Massachusetts requesting their co-operation in restrictive measures
against the Quakers, in these remarkable words:
“We have no law among us, whereby to punish any for only declaring
by words, etc., their minds and understandings concerning the
things and ways of God, as to salvation and an eternal condition.
And we, moreover, find that in those places where these people
aforesaid in this colony are most of all suffered to declare
themselves freely, and are only opposed by arguments in discourse,
there they least of all desire to come. And we are informed that
they begin to loathe this place, for that they are not opposed
by the civil authority, but, with all patience and meekness, are
suffered to say over their pretended revelations and admonitions.
Nor are they like or able to gain many here to their way. Surely,
we find that they delight to be persecuted by civil powers; and
when they are so, they are like to gain more adherents by the
conceit of their painful sufferings than by consent to their
pernicious sayings.”[19]
The law was passed in October 1658, and at first it seemed to have
accomplished its object. The first six Quakers who were banished after
it had been put in force went away and made no attempt to come back;
but in June 1659 four who were more resolute and determined appeared
in Boston with the avowed intention of defying the law. They were
William Robinson, Marmaduke Stevenson, Nicholas Davis, and Mary Dyer.
They were arrested and sentenced to banishment (September 12th), with
the threat that they should suffer death if they remained or returned
to the colony. Nicholas Davis and Mary Dyer “found freedom to depart;
but the other two were constrained in the love and power of the Lord
not to depart, but to stay in the jurisdiction, and to try the bloody
law unto death.”[20] They withdrew to the New Hampshire settlements,
but in about four weeks returned to Boston prepared to die, and were
joined there by Mary Dyer, who had decided to share their fate. They
were arraigned before the General Court, which was then in session,
and admitting that they were the persons banished by the last Court
of Assistants, were sentenced to be hanged in a week from that time
(October 19th).[21] The authorities evidently were afraid of popular
sympathy, for they gave orders for a military guard of one hundred
men to conduct them to the gallows, while another military force
was charged to watch the rest of the town, and the selectmen were
instructed to “press ten or twelve able and faithful persons every
night to watch the town and guard the prison.”
Neither side would yield: the Quakers had come back with the declared
purpose of dying for their faith and for the principle of religious
liberty; the authorities did not dare to withdraw from the position in
which they had rashly placed themselves, and the leaders do not seem
to have had any desire to do so. They felt that the question of their
authority was at stake, and that if they yielded their power over
the people would be gone. They were willing to claim for themselves
and their institutions the protection of the laws of England, but
they would not admit any appeal to those laws when they conflicted
with the colonial regulations. They claimed to own the colony in full
sovereignty, in virtue of their charter on the one hand and their deeds
from the Indians on the other, and they argued that they had the same
right to exclude obnoxious and dangerous persons, and to destroy them
if they persistently thrust themselves upon them, that a householder
has of resisting a burglar, or a shepherd of killing the wolves that
break into his sheepfold.
It is a great mistake to say that they had come to the colony from a
zeal for religious liberty. What they had come for was to be in a
place where they could order religious affairs to suit themselves. As
Besse, the Quaker historian, shrewdly remarks: “They appear not so
inconsistent with themselves as some have thought, because when under
oppression they pleaded for liberty of conscience, they understood it
not as the natural and common right of all mankind, but as a peculiar
privilege of the orthodox.”[22]
The tragedy was performed on the twenty-seventh day of October 1659;
the prisoners, walking hand in hand, were brought to the gallows by
the soldiers. They were insulted in their last moments by the bigoted
Wilson, and when they tried to address the people their voices were
drowned by the beating of the drums. Robinson and Stevenson died
bravely, and Mary Dyer mounted the ladder to meet her fate; her skirts
were tied, the rope was about her neck, and she was on the point
of being “turned off,” when she was released by the magistrates in
consideration of the intercession of her son, who had come up from
Rhode Island to try to save his mother’s life. She unwillingly accepted
the grudging gift, and went back to Rhode Island.[23]
The popular feeling was so strong against the magistrates for their
severity, that they thought it best to put forth a declaration, in
which they argued that their proceedings were justified by the law
of self-defence, and by the precedent of the English laws against
the Jesuits; and they calmly stated that what they had done was
only to present the point of their sword in their own defence, that
the Quakers who had rushed upon it had become “_felons de se_,” and
that their former proceedings and their mercy to Mary Dyer upon the
“inconsiderable intercession” of her son “manifestly evinced that they
desired their lives absent rather than their death present.”[24]
The bodies of the unfortunate men were treated with indecent brutality,
and were buried naked beneath the gallows. Mrs. Dyer remained away for
six months, and then the spirit moved her to return once more and die.
Her husband wrote to Endicott to beg her life, but without avail. No
mercy could be shown her as long as she defied the law. It is said that
her life was offered her if she would promise to keep out of the colony
henceforth, but she declined to receive the favor.[25] “In obedience
to the will of the Lord I came,” said she, “and in his will I abide
faithful to the death.”
Meanwhile the prisons and the house of correction had been the fate
of other delinquents, and the jailer and executioner had had plenty
of employment with the scourge. The Southwicks, with their eldest son
Josiah, were whipped, fined, and imprisoned for withdrawing from the
public services and worshipping by themselves, and their two younger
children were ordered to be sold as slaves to the West Indies in
satisfaction of the fines imposed.[26] W. Shattuck was whipped, fined,
and imprisoned. Sarah Gibbons and Dorothy Waugh were whipped. Hored
Gardner, a woman with a sucking babe, and a young girl who came into
the colony with her, were scourged with the “three-fold knotted whip,
and during her tortures she prayed for her persecutors.”
William Brand was thrown into the House of Correction, and, refusing to
work, was beaten constantly by the brutal jailer with a tarred rope an
inch thick. The pathetic record says: “His back and arms were bruised
black, and the blood was hanging as in bags under his arms, and so into
one was his flesh beaten that the sign of a particular blow could not
be seen, for all became as a jelly.”[27]
William Leddra and Rouse, whose ears had been cut off, were ordered to
be whipped twice a week with increasing severity until they consented
to work, and were at last dismissed from the colony under pain of death
if they returned.
Patience Scott, a girl eleven years old, was imprisoned as a Quaker,
but discharged, after a period of detention, in consideration of her
youth; but her mother, Catherine Scott, for reproving the magistrates
for a deed of darkness, was whipped ten stripes, although she was
admitted by them to be otherwise of blameless life and conversation.
Christopher Holden, who, in spite of losing his ears in 1658, had
returned once more, was banished upon pain of death by the same court
that had hanged Robinson and Stevenson.[28] Seven or eight persons were
fined, some as high as ten pounds, for entertaining Quakers, and Edward
Wharton, for piloting them from one place to another, was ordered to be
whipped twenty stripes, and bound to his good behavior. Divers others
were then brought upon trial, “for adhering to the cursed sect of
Quakers, not disowning themselves to be such, refusing to give civil
respect, leaving their families and relations, and roaming from place
to place vagabonds like”; and Daniel Gold was sentenced to be whipped
thirty stripes, Robert Harper fifteen, and they, with Alice Courland,
Mary Scott, and Hope Clifton, banished upon pain of death; William
Kingswill whipped fifteen stripes; Margaret Smith, Mary Trask, and
Provided Southwick ten stripes each, and Hannah Phelps admonished.[29]
In November, William Leddra, who had been released, returned, and
was at once arrested. On his trial the opportunity of withdrawal was
again extended, but he refused to accept it, and was executed March 1,
1661. As he ascended the ladder he was heard to say: “All that will
be Christ’s disciples must take up the cross,” and just as he was
being thrown from its rounds, he cried in the words of Stephen, “Lord
Jesus, receive my spirit.” Wenlock Christison, who had been before this
sentenced to death, but allowed to leave the colony, had returned,
and during Leddra’s trial he came boldly before the Court and told
the astonished judges: “I am come here to warn you that ye shed no
more innocent blood.” He was at once arrested, and was brought up for
trial three months later. There was an unusual difference of opinion
in regard to the case, and the condemnation was only secured by the
violence of Endicott, who was able to browbeat the others into consent.
But the sentence they passed was never executed. The people were tired
of bloodshed, and the opposition which was shown in the General Court
to any further proceedings was so great as to make a change in the law
necessary.[30]
The humanity of the delegates to the Court was probably considerably
quickened by a sense of the dangerous position in which the colony
stood since the restoration of Charles II., who, they might naturally
fear, would call them to an account for their proceedings, especially
as the colony had allowed nearly a year to pass without any recognition
of the change in the political situation.
The General Court attempted to save its dignity by interposing a still
greater number of shameful and unusual punishments between the first
offence and the death penalty, and declared that, “being desirous to
try all means with as much lenity as might consist with safety to
prevent the intrusions of the Quakers, who had not been restrained
by the laws already provided, they would henceforth order that such
intruders should be tied to a cart’s tail and whipped from town to
town toward the borders of the jurisdiction. Should they return after
being dealt with thus thrice, they were to be branded with the letter
R on their left shoulder, and be severely whipped and sent away again
at the cart’s tail. Should they again return, they were to be liable to
the former law of banishment under pain of death.”[31]
It is quite possible that this appeared to be lenity to men like
Endicott and Norton, but it is very doubtful whether the Quakers so
considered it. It did not prevent, though it anticipated, an order from
the king directing that any Quakers imprisoned or under sentence should
be released and sent to England for trial.[32] To make this still more
galling to the pride of the colony, it was sent by Samuel Shattuck, a
Salem Quaker, who had been banished from the colony under pain of death
if he should return, and who, we cannot doubt, thoroughly enjoyed his
mission and the humiliation of Endicott. For a short time the order
was obeyed and then the “lenient” laws were put in force again; and,
as many delicately nurtured Quaker women found to their cost, the
“tender mercies” of the saints were cruel. Palfrey remarks, with great
gratification apparently, that “no hanging, no branding, ever took
place by force of this law,” but that “under its provisions for other
penalties the contest was carried on for a considerable time longer.”
It would be wearisome to cite all of the subsequent proceedings; a few
of them will suffice to show that the treatment of the Quakers still
continued to be extremely severe, and that in spite of it all they
persisted in braving the threats of the magistrates. It was not until
1679, when religious toleration was forced against their wills upon the
good Christians of Massachusetts, that the Quakers found any safety
within the boundaries of the colony.
In 1661, when the Quakers were set free at the command of the king,
some of them were whipped at the cart’s tail twenty stripes apiece, on
the ground that they were vagabonds.[33]
In 1662, Josiah Southwick, who had returned from his banishment,
was whipped at the cart’s tail in Boston, Roxbury, and Dedham, and
dismissed into the woods with a warning not to return. The magistrates
apparently had found that their old style of whipping was too humane;
for the whip used on this and several subsequent occasions was made,
not of cord, “but of dried guts like the bass strings of a bass viol,”
with three knots at each end--a weapon which, according to contemporary
testimony, made holes in the back that one could put pease into.[34]
In December 1662 Ann Coleman, Mary Tompkins, and Alice Ambrose were
stripped to the waist and whipped at the cart’s tail in Dover, Hampton,
and Salisbury, and were forced to walk the entire distance in slush
and snow up to their knees. The “lenient” sentence required indeed
that they should be whipped in each town in the jurisdiction, but the
constable at Newbury found in the warrant some flaw by which he was
able to release them. On their return to Dover, they were seized by
the constables by night, dragged face downwards over snow and stumps
to the river, one of them at least was doused in the stream and
dragged after a canoe, and they were only released because the storm
was too severe for their tormentors to brave.[35] Ann Coleman, again,
with four friends, was whipped through Salem, Boston, and Dedham.[36]
Elizabeth Hooton, a woman of over sixty years of age, Fox’s first
convert, was first imprisoned, and then carried two days’ journey into
the wilderness, “among wolves and bears,” and left there to shift for
herself. On returning, she was kept in a dungeon at Cambridge two
days without food, tied to the whipping-post and flogged there, then
taken to Watertown, where she was flogged with willow rods, flogged
again at Dedham, and then carried into the woods as before. Coming back
once more to fetch her clothes from Cambridge, she and a companion,
“an ancient woman,” and her daughter were whipped in private, in spite
of which we find her coming once more to Boston, and on that occasion
she was whipped again at the cart’s tail.[37] Mary Tompkins, Alice
Ambrose, and Ann Needham also appear again and again in the records of
suffering. One Edward Wharton, who was most resolute in defying the
authorities, was constantly under arrest, and even a bare enumeration
of his floggings would fill a page.
In 1665 Deborah Wilson, for going naked through the streets of Salem
“for a sign,” was whipped; but the constable executed his office
so mercifully that he was displaced. There is a pathetic incident
mentioned by Bishop, the Quaker historian, that “her tender husband,
though not altogether of her way, followed after,” as she underwent
her punishment, “clapping his hat sometimes between the whip and her
back.”[38]
Eliakim Wardwell, at Newbury, was fined heavily in 1665 for
entertaining Wenlock Christison; and this injustice in addition to the
other cruel acts, so affected his wife Lydia that, although a modest
and delicate woman, she came naked into the meeting at Newbury, as a
testimony against them. She was seized and hurried away to the court at
Ipswich, which sentenced her to be whipped at the nearest tavern post.
Bishop says:
Without _Law_ or _President_ _they_ condemned her to be tyed to
the fence Post of the tavern, where they sat, which is usually
their Court places, where they may serve their ears with Musick,
and their bellies with Wine and gluttony; whereunto _she_ was tyed
stript from the _Waste_ upwards, with her naked breasts to the
splinters of the _Posts_ and there sorely lashed, with _twenty_ or
_thirty_ cruel stripes, which though it miserably tore and bruised
_her_ tender body, yet to the joy of _her_ Husband and Friends
that were Spectators, _she_ was carried through all these inhumane
cruelties, quiet and chearful, and to the shame and confusion of
these unreasonable _bruit_ beasts, whose name shall rot, and their
memory perish.[39]
Eliakim, her husband, some time after, for vindicating her character,
was by order of the court at Hampton bound to a tree and whipped
fifteen lashes. In 1675 a law was passed which made it the duty of the
constables, under heavy penalties, to break up all Quaker meetings and
to commit those present to the House of Correction, there to have the
discipline of the house and be kept to work on bread and water, or else
to pay five pounds.
In 1677 an order was passed requiring an oath of fidelity to the
country, and legal liabilities were imposed upon all who refused the
oath. This struck directly at the Quakers, and was believed by them,
whether justly or not, to have been made for the purpose of vexing and
plundering them.[40] A vigorous protest against it was made in writing
by Margaret Brewster, who came from Barbadoes to bear her testimony
against the law and to declare the evils that were coming upon the
colony. Having, as she declared, “a foresight given of that grievous
calamity called the Black Pox, which afterwards spread there to the
cutting off of many of the People. Wherefore she was constrained in a
prophetic manner to warn them thereof, by entering into their publick
assembly clothed in sackcloth and ashes, and with her face made black.”
For this she and four of her friends were arrested and cast into prison
upon the charge of “making a horrible disturbance, and affrighting
the people in the South Church in Boston in the time of the public
dispensing of the Word, whereby several women ... are in danger of
miscarrying.” She was whipped at the cart’s tail twenty lashes, and the
young women who were with her were forced to accompany her during her
punishment. Twelve Quakers, who were arrested the same day at a Quaker
meeting, were whipped, and fifteen the week following.[41]
In the other colonies the sufferings of the Quakers were not so
severe, though in Plymouth they had to endure banishment, fines, and
whippings. In Connecticut, thanks probably to the wisdom of John
Winthrop, the only cases which occurred were met with banishment, and
the Quakers seem to have respected the jurisdiction where they were
mercifully treated. In New Haven there were several prosecutions;
Southold on Long Island seems to have been the place most frequented
by the Quakers, though they also appeared in Greenwich. The only case
of extreme severity was that of Humphrey Norton, who had already borne
his torturing in Massachusetts, where he had enraged the magistrates
by his appeal to the laws of England. He was arrested at Southold
and taken to New Haven, where he was “cast into Prison and chained
to a Post, and kept night and day for the space of twenty Days with
great Weights of Iron in an open Prison without Fire or Candles in
the bitter cold Winter (December 1657), enough (reasonably) to have
starved him,” as Bishop writes. When he attempted to reply to Davenport
in the Court, he was not suffered to speak, but was gagged with “a
great Iron Key, tied athwart his mouth.” After his trial was over he
was whipped thirty stripes and branded H in the hand.[42] Several
who sympathized with or who entertained Quakers were punished with
heavy fines. In New Netherlands they fared little better;[43] and in
Virginia the much-flogged Mary Tompkins and Alice Ambrose found little
mercy from the cavaliers, being put in the pillory and whipped with a
cat-of-nine-tails so severely that blood was drawn by the very first
stroke; and George Wilson, “in cruel irons that rotted his flesh,
and long imprisonment, departed this life for his testimony to the
Lord.”[44] In Maryland they were subjected to fine and imprisonment
for refusing to take an oath or to serve in the militia. Liberty of
conscience was granted in 1688.[45]
It was in New England, and especially in Massachusetts, that the
persecution was general and severe. The magistrates, as a rule,
defended their action, as necessary to the maintenance of their
authority and to the preservation of order and orthodoxy; and their
conduct has been extenuated and excused, if not actually defended, by
modern New England historians.
It is not a pleasant history, but there is something to be said upon
the side of the authorities even by one who has no admiration for them
or sympathy with them. The Puritans had not come to New England for
liberty of thought, but for liberty of action. Having failed, as they
thought at the time, to secure the triumph of their views in the church
and state of England, they preferred to leave the struggle and come to
New England, where they could live under their own system without being
obliged to contend or suffer for their faith--a point upon which the
Quaker controversialists make some very sharp remarks.[46]
They considered the territory which they held to be their own
_peculium_, and claimed that by their charter they had acquired
absolute sovereignty in its limits, subject to no appeal to England;
and they realized that if appeal to England was granted, their absolute
authority was at an end. One of the leading colonists is reported to
have said: “If we admit appeal to the Parliament this year, next year
they will send to see how it is, and the third year the government
will be changed.” The settlement also had in their eyes a religious
character; it was founded, as they boasted, for religion and not for
trade, and they held that they had a right to dictate the religious
usages and practices therein, as was shown by their treatment of
Mrs. Hutchinson and Wheelwright, Roger Williams and Gorton, Child
and Maverick, not to mention Morton of Merry Mount. They believed
the Quakers to be a pernicious sect, confounding them with other
fanatical bodies which they resembled, and they feared that the natural
consequence of the claim which they made to immediate revelation would
be communistic attempts at the overthrow of the established order, such
as had been seen a hundred years before in Germany. From these premises
the conclusion was a natural one, that their duty was to nip the evil
in the bud, to crush the Quakers before they became strong enough
to be dangerous to the state. Their action in banishing the first
that arrived, before any overt acts were committed, was undoubtedly
technically illegal; but if the Quakers had been in reality what they
fancied them, no one would have blamed them for their prompt decision.
Besides, they had a law by which they were accustomed to banish
heretics, and the Quakers might very well come under that description.
As regards the compelling shipmasters to carry them back to the port
from which they had come, such a custom had prevailed from a very early
date in the case of undesirable immigrants. Winthrop, in his History
mentions the reshipping to England of a crazy pauper woman whom the
parish of Willesden had sent over to the colonists in Massachusetts.
The Quakers came in spite of banishment, and the more they were
imprisoned and beaten the more daring became their defiance, the more
violent their abuse. They spared neither priest nor magistrate, and the
floods of denunciation which they poured out were portentous. It is not
to be wondered at that a stern and severe people, living a hard and
cruel life of constant struggle with the elements, and in the constant
dread lest their privileges should be assailed, should have been cruel
in their treatment of these incorrigible offenders.
Judged by the common standard of the age, the cruelty of the treatment
of the Quakers is not so remarkable as to be singled out above all
other cruelties for reprobation. The Quakers themselves were cruel at
times. George Fox himself is said to have been a witch-finder; and a
son of the Samuel Shattuck who bore the king’s mandate to Endicott
appears in the Salem witchcraft trials as a prominent witness against
some of the unfortunates.[47] The folly and fatuity of the treatment
adopted is more of a point to notice. In the colonies where the Quakers
were let alone they caused no trouble. Palfrey’s sneer, that there
was no order to disturb in Rhode Island, may be justified perhaps as
regards that colony, but Connecticut certainly was a well-ordered
commonwealth. In Massachusetts, on the contrary, the same persons
kept coming again and again, and the severer the punishments the
madder became their actions. It should be remembered that the acts
usually mentioned as justifying the Puritans’ severity, such as the
performances of the naked women at Salem and Newbury, of the men who
broke bottles on the pulpit steps, and of the woman who smeared her
face with black and frightened the matrons in the Old South church,
were not committed until after the persecution had been carried on
for years, until scores of women had been stripped naked and flogged
by the authorities, until men had had their ears cut off, and until
three men and one woman had been put to death upon the gallows. The
persecution was a blunder, and the details of it made it a blunder
of the most atrocious description. Power was put into the hands of
local and irresponsible magistrates to sentence men and women to
these shameful and unusual punishments, and brutal constables and
jailers were entrusted with the enforcement of the law without any
due supervision. The most painful part of the whole history is the
attitude of the Puritan clergy, in Massachusetts especially. They were
bitter and bigoted, hounding on the magistrates to their cruel work,
and insulting the unfortunate wretches when they came to suffer. Quaker
instinct rightly, no doubt, fixed upon John Norton as the “Fountain
and Principal unto whom most of the cruelty and bloodshed is to be
imputed.”[48]
For the constancy of the Quakers themselves, their endurance and
their fortitude, one can feel nothing but admiration. One remembers
how, centuries before, men who like them were willing to die rather
than to deny their faith had been called the enemies of mankind, and
accused of a perverse and execrable superstition. It must be admitted,
however, that their behavior was often of a kind that would not be
allowed to-day any more than it was then, although it is to be hoped
that our modern statecraft would find milder and more efficient means
of repression than did our predecessors in New England; yet when one
remembers how the Mormons were treated in Illinois and Missouri, and
how the mob destroyed a Roman Catholic convent in Massachusetts, within
the memories of living men, we may think it perhaps prudent not to be
too sweeping in our condemnation.
The fundamental difficulty in the Puritans’ position was their illegal
and unconstitutional government. To maintain that, they were led to
deny to other Englishmen their rights, and to assert an independence of
the home authorities which was little short of actual separation.
The second evil principle in their government was the union of church
and state, or rather the subjection of the state to the church, a
church moreover in which the people had no rights except by favor
of the ministers, a church that was a close corporation and imbued
with the spirit of the law of Moses rather than that of the gospel of
Christ. In church, as well as in state, there was a consciousness
that their existence was illegal and illegitimate; that, in spite
of their protests to the contrary, they had separated from their
fellow-Christians in England and had formed a polity for themselves;
hence, just as they felt it necessary to manifest their political
authority by acts of severity upon any who questioned it, so they
deemed it necessary to maintain their orthodoxy by persecuting those
who differed from them in religion. They were ill at ease both
politically and religiously, and they sought to disguise the fact from
themselves, by making proof of all the power that they possessed.
Hence it was that the conflict arose which has stained with innocent
blood the early history of the land. It is not to be wondered that the
Quakers should see, in the horrible death of Endicott and the miserable
end of Norton,[49] the hand of an avenging Providence, or that they
should believe that for a distance of twenty miles from Boston the
ground was cursed so that no wheat could ripen because of a blood-red
blight that fastened upon it.[50] But we, who live at a time when we
can view the history of the struggle with calmness and impartiality,
may respect the grim determination of the severe magistrates who felt
it their duty, at whatever cost, to keep that which was committed
to their trust free from the poison of heresy and fanaticism, while
we sorrow at the blindness which hid from their eyes the folly and
the cruelty of their proceedings. We may sympathize with the tortured
Quakers, whom we now know to be harmless enthusiasts, yet without
approving or extenuating their mad actions, their abusive language, or
their grotesque indecencies; and we may hope that, though at enmity in
this life, yet, as Browning wrote of Strafford and Pym,
“in that world
Where great hearts led astray are turned again,”
both now are able to respect each other’s loyalty of purpose and
fidelity to their respective conceptions of truth.
NOTES.
[1] _Vide infra_, Note 6.
[2] George Fox, _Journal_. It is well to notice that of the ministers
mentioned by Fox by name or parish, Nath. Stevens, the rector of Fenny
Drayton, was a Presbyterian of some eminence, and was ejected for
non-conformity in 1662. So also was Matthew Cradock, the “priest of
Coventry,” who was a distinguished non-conformist divine. The priest
at Mansetter, who advised tobacco and psalm-singing, kept his living
during the whole period of the Commonwealth, and so may be presumed
not to have been a “Churchman” in the commonly received sense of the
term. “One Macham,” of whom Fox speaks, and who seems to have treated
him with more sympathetic kindness than any of the others, was a loyal
Churchman and was sequestered in 1645, as a penalty for his adherence
to the bishop and the king to whom he had sworn allegiance. It is
rather surprising to find historians in general, even those who should
be better informed, assuming that, because these men were filling the
parishes of the Church of England, they were, therefore, Church of
England clergymen.
[3] Bishop, George, _New England Judged_, London, 1661, pp. 14–25.
[4] Geo. E. Ellis, _Memorial History of Boston_, vol. i. p. 181.
[5] Hubbard’s _History of New England_, p. 553.
[6] _Massachusetts Records_, iv. (1), 276.
[7] Bishop, 5–13.
[8] Hazard, _Historical Collections_, ii. 349. _Rhode Island Records_,
i. 374.
[9] _Mass. Records_, iv. (1), 277.
[10] Bishop, 38, 39.
[11] Bishop, 40, 42.
[12] _Mass. Records_, iv. (1), 308. Bishop, 50.
[13] _Mass. Records_, iv. (1), 325.
[14] Bishop, 72, 73.
[15] _Mass. Records_, iv. (1), 345, 346.
[16] _Mass. Archives_, vol. x. p. 246.
[17] _Mass. Records_, iv. (1), 348. (In payment for this work Norton
received five hundred acres of land, a good price for a sermon.
_Ibid._, p. 397.)
[18] _The Heart of New England Rent at the Blasphemies of the Present
Generation._ Printed by _Samuel Green_, _Cambridge in New England_,
1659. The arguments used in this declaration are so characteristic
of the spirit of the times that the following extract may be useful.
The author has been demonstrating that the Quakers were heretical on
various points of the faith, and that the Scriptures authorize the
punishment of false believers. He continues:
“But other Scriptures omitted, I shall here transcribe only two more,
both of which are eminently pregnant with this truth: wherein also are
cases put between the cause of God and our near relations, on purpose
to provide against obstructions in this great business of religion.
The first we have _Deut._ xiii. _per totum_.
Relating to all times succeeding that constitution; ‘_If thy brother,
the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of
thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee
secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not
known, thou, nor thy fathers; Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor
hearken unto him; neither shalt thine eyes pity him, neither shalt
thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him._’ vers. 6, 8. The second
we have _Zech._ xiii. 1, 3. _Expressly relating unto the times of the
Gospel. In that day_, viz.: after the Coming of the Messiah in the time
of the Gospel _when the families of the tribes shall mourne Chapt._
xii. 11. _The familie of the house of David apart, & the familie of
the house of Nathan apart, etc. There shall be a fountain opened_, _i.
e._ the doctrine of Christ under Moses’ dispensation is compared to _a
fountain vailed_, 2 Cor. iii. 13, etc. Under the Gospel dispensation
to a _fountain opened_. The vail of the Temple & the ceremonial law
being taken away. _And it shall come to pass that when any shall yet
Prophecie, then his father & his mother that begat him, shall thrust
him through, when he prophecieth._ These words [thrust him through] may
be understood either of a Capital punishment judicially dispensed, or
of any other smart punishment piercing though not Capital.
* * * * *
“Wee through grace abhorre prejudicing the liberty of conscience the
least measure, and account such report of us to be a slander. And
through the same grace; Wee both dread, and beare witness against,
liberty of heresy, liberty to Blaspheme the Blessed Trinity, the Person
and Office of Christ, the holy-Scripture, the tabernacle of God,
and those that dwell in heaven. Howsoever fallaciously transformed
into, and misrepresented under the plausible vizard of liberty of
conscience falsely so called. We say Religion is to be perswaded
with Scripture-reasons, not Civil weapons: with Arguments, not with
punishments. But blasphemies immediate and heresies carried on with
an high hand, and persisted in are to be suppressed with weapons and
punishments; where reasons, and arguments cannot prevail.
We distinguish between Heresie (Quiet and alone, Turbulent, i. e.
incorrigible) accompanied with soliciting the people to apostacy
from the Faith of Christ to defection from the churches, to Sedition
in the Commonwealth. And that after due meanes of conviction, and
Authoritative prohibition.
We subject not any to Civil or Corporal punishment for heresie, if
_quiet and alone_. We do not inflict any Church-censure in case of
heresie, without doctrinal conviction on the Churche’s part, and
contumacy on the delinquent’s part foregoing.
In case of _Heresie incorrigible_, in conjunction with endeavours
to seduce others thereunto, and tending to the disturbing of
Publick-order, we acknowledge it to be the pious Wisdom of the
Magistrate to proceed gradually, and where gentler meanes may
rationally be looked at as effectual, there to abstain from the use of
any severer remedie.
And according to this method, hath been the gradual proceeding of the
Magistrate here, with those (hitherto incorrigible) _Quakers_, who
from England have unreasonably and insolently obtruded themselves upon
us. 1. Instructing them. 2. Restraining them untill an opportunity for
their returne. 3. Publishing a law to warne and prohibite both them and
all others of that sect, from Coming into this jurisdiction: otherwise
to expect the house of Correction. And in case they returned yet again,
then to loose one of their eares, etc.
At last upon experience of their bold contempt of these inferior
restraints, and that after their being sent away again and again, they
continue to return yet again and again; to the seducing of diverse,
the disturbance, vexation and hazard of the whole Colonie. The Court
finding the Law passed, to be an insufficient fence against these
persons, proceeded to a Sentence of Banishment.
Their restraint before the Law published, was but restraint in the
Prison, until an opportunity of shipping them away. They who after
the Law was published, would that notwithstanding, break in upon us
from England, or other forraign parts, by Rode-Island, after their
correction received, and discharging their dues, might return again to
the Island, if they pleased. The wolfe which ventures over the wild
Sea, out of a ravening desire to prey upon the sheep, when landed,
discovered and taken, hath no cause to complain, though for the
security of the flock, he be penned up, with the door opening unto the
fold fast shut; but having another door purposely left open, whereby
he may depart at his pleasure either returning from whence he came, or
otherwise quitting the place.
Their _Sentence of Banishment_ as Circumstanced, by an Impartial and
equal eye, may be looked upon as an Act which the court was forced unto
_se defendendo_, in defence of Religion, themselves, the Churches,
and this poore State and People from Ruine: which the principles of
confusion, daylie and studiously disseminated by them, threatened to
bring all unto, if not seasonably prevented. _Exile from a wilderness_,
from a place of exile; though voluntarie, from a place; confinement
whereunto would indeed justly be called exile, is an _easie exile_.”
(Pages 48, 49, 53, 54.)
[19] _Rhode Island Records_, i. 376–378. See also the letter of the
General Assembly, 378–380.
[20] Bishop, 95.
[21] _Mass. Records_, iv. (1), 383.
[22] _The Sufferings of the People called Quakers_, by Jos. Besse,
London, 1753, ii. p. 177.
[23] Bishop, 89–95, 109.
[24] Hubbard’s _History of New England_, p. 173. See also an _Address
to the King_ (Charles II.), Dec. 19, 1660, in which the colonial
authorities argue as follows: “Concerning the Quakers, open and
capitall blasphemers, open seducers from the glorious Trinity, the
Lord’s Christ, our Lord Jesus Christ, etc. the blessed gospell,
and from the Holy Scriptures as the rule of life, open enemies to
government itself as established in the hands of any but men of their
oune principles, malignant and assiduous promoters of doctrines
directly tending to subvert both our churches and state, after
all other meanes for a long time used in vajne, wee were at last
constrejned, for our oune safety, to pass a sentence of banishment
against them, vpon pajne of death. Such was theire daingerous,
impetuous, & desperat turbulency, both to religion & the state civil
& ecclesiastical, as that how vnwillingly soever, could it have binn
avoyded, the magistrate at last, in conscience both to God and Man,
judged himself called for the defense of all, to keep the passage with
the point of the sword held towards them. This could do no harm to
him that would be warned thereby: theire wittingly rushing themselves
therevpon was theire oune act, & wee, w^{th} all humility, conceive a
cryme bringing theire blood on theire oune head. The Quakers died, not
because of theire other crymes, how capitall soever, but vpon theire
superadded presumptuous & incorrigible contempt of authority; breaking
in vpon vs notw^{th}standing theire sentence of banishment made knoune
to them. Had they not binn restreigned, so farr as appeared, there was
too much cause to feare that wee ourselves must quickly haue dyed, or
worse; and such was theire insolency, that they would not be restreined
but by death; nay, had they at last but promised to depart the
jurisdiction, and not to returne w^{th}out leaue from authority, wee
should haue binn glad of such an opportunity to haue sayd they should
not dye.” _Mass. Records_, iv. (1), 450–453. Bishop, 113.
[25] _Mass. Records_, iv. (1), 419.
[26] _Mass. Records_, iv. (1), 366. Bishop, 90, 91.
[27] Bishop, 44–48, 52–54.
[28] _Mass. Records_, iv. (1), 391.
[29] Bishop, 111. _Mass. Records_, iv. (1), 411.
[30] Bishop, Second Part, 14, 26, 30–35.
[31] _Mass. Records_, iv. (2), 2–4, May, 1661.
[32] Bishop, Second Part, 38, 39. The Declaration presented to the King
by the Quakers may be found in the Preface to Besse’s _Sufferings of
the People called Quakers_, I. xxx., xxxii.
[33] _Mass. Records_, iv. (2), 24.
[34] Bishop, Second Part, 52.
[35] _Ibid._, 58, 65.
[36] _Ibid._, 112.
[37] _Ibid._, 90–105.
[38] _Ibid._, 74.
[39] _Ibid._, 68, 69.
[40] Besse, ii. 259.
[41] Besse, ii. 260–264.
[42] Bishop, 154, 155.
[43] Bishop, Second Part, 105–108.
[44] Bishop, Second Part, 46, 120.
[45] Besse, ii. 387.
[46] “And you shewed your Spirit, who ran away from England, and could
not abide the sufferings of your purse, and a Prison, and when you
were got beyond Sea, then you could Hang, and Burn, and Whip, God’s
Creatures, and the true Subjects of _England_; yet you would have the
name of Christians who have cast away all Humanity and Christianity,
by your fury, rage, and _Nebuchadnezzar’s_ spirit; who are worse
than the very _Indians_, whose name stinks both among _Indians_ and
_Christians_, which is become a proverb and a common Cry, The bloody
Crimes of _New England_, a company of rotten Hypocrites which fled from
_Old England_ to save their purses and themselves from Imprisonment,
and then can Hang, and Burn, and Whip, and spoil the Goods of such
as come out of England to inhabit among them, only for being called
Quakers.... Are these the men that fled for Religion all people may
say, that now Hang, Burn, Imprison, Cut, Fine, and spoil the Goods, and
drink the blood of the innocent. God will give you a Cup of trembling,
that you shall be a by-word, and a hissing to all your neighbours.”
Bishop, Second Part, 146, 147.
[47] See Note 83, on the next Essay.
[48] Bishop, 67.
[49] Bishop, Second Part, 139. Besse, ii. 270.
[50] Hutchinson, _History of Massachusets-Bay_, i. 223.
II.
THE WITCHES.
The story of the witchcraft delusion in New England is a sequel and
companion-piece to the history of the conflict with the Quakers.
Both exhibit the least attractive side of our forefathers, and both
point the moral that the intermeddling by ecclesiastics in matters
of public policy is dangerous to the state. It is a strange tale of
superstition and of panic, painful to dwell upon, but necessary to a
proper comprehension of the characters of the leaders of New England,
and of the conditions under which the struggling colonies developed
their strong and distinct individuality. It should always be remembered
that belief in witchcraft was not a peculiarity of New England,
and that the reason the colonists there have been judged so hardly
for their panic is that men have felt that they had claimed to be
superior to the men of their generation, and thus should be measured
by a higher standard. Their claim had some justification. The leaders
of thought in New England had advanced in some directions far beyond
their contemporaries; in political insight and political adroitness
they have had few equals in any period; but they were hampered and
burdened by the very religion which to their fathers had been a gospel
of liberty and a source of inspiration. This had become a theology with
its dogmas and its rules; the devout and earnest ministers who had
contended for their faith in England, or had braved the perils of the
seas and the loneliness of the wilderness to be free to worship God as
they chose, had given place to the second generation, who had never
known suffering, and were therefore ignorant of mercy; men who were
enthusiastic indeed, but not so much enthusiastic for religion as for
their creed; not so zealous for Christ as for their own peculiar way of
worshipping him. The result had been a general lowering of spiritual
tone, which was recognized and freely acknowledged and deplored by the
best men of the period. It seems inevitable that this hardening and
narrowing should follow ages of contest and struggle. When the faith
becomes a war-cry, it necessarily loses much of its spirituality.
Beliefs for which one age has suffered become crystallized into
formulas for the next, and divines wonder at the hardness of men’s
hearts in refusing obedience to what once indeed had been a law of
life, but by being made a commandment has become a law unto death.
So, while our New England forefathers were clever politicians, shrewd
and adroit men of affairs, practical and full of ingenious expedients,
intelligent and clear-headed about their secular business, they
retrograded in religion, and became formalists and controversialists.
Theological orthodoxy supplanted intelligent Christianity, and New
England religion sank into a dreary series of wranglings about
Cambridge platforms and Saybrook platforms, half-way covenants and
whole-way covenants, old lights and new lights, consociations and
associations, until it became, for a time at least, more arid and
lifeless than ever had been the Church of England, against the
formalism of which they were continually protesting. It is true that
a few isolated cases of witchcraft are found occurring in the early
history of the colonies, and it was then that the severe laws were
enacted; yet the serious trouble, the great panic, did not come until
the first generation, “those men who had seen the works of the Lord,”
had been gathered unto their fathers. One cannot imagine John Cotton
playing the part of his namesake Cotton Mather, or John Winthrop,
superstitious as he was, in the place of Stoughton. Even Wilson and
Norton, who exulted in the blood of the Quakers, thought witch-finding
a cowardly yielding to popular folly. The responsibility of the men
of the first generation lies rather in the character of the religious
training they gave their successors, a gloomy religion, which in
themselves had been mitigated by a piety, sincere if fanatical, and
perhaps also by some recollection of the brighter experiences of their
childhood’s days in the more genial religious life of England, a life
their children had never known.
It is, then, not astonishing that our forefathers in New England should
have been victims to a common delusion of their times. We may even
say that the circumstances of their lives were such as to render them
especially liable to it; for though the hardships of the early history
of the settlement grew less as time went on, the life in New England
was, at the best, lonely and depressing. The colonists lived dreary
lives of laborious and uninteresting toil, with few physical comforts,
and with poor and unvaried diet. They had few amusements, little or
no recreation, and they were constantly in face of difficulties,
constantly exposed to danger. Their houses were on the verge of the
mysterious forest, where strange sights and sounds were to be seen
and heard, where dwelt the Indians, often hostile and always a source
of uneasiness. They had few books, and those they had were not of a
character to draw them away from the contemplation of themselves.
The Bible they had, it is true, but to read it for any purpose
except that of spiritual exercise would have been deemed profane.
Sermons of abnormal length and dryness, controversial treatises,
ponderous alike literally and figuratively, and, as we shall see
later, ghastly and blood-curdling accounts of memorable providences,
formed their principal literature. The settlers had been for the most
part emigrants from quiet country towns and villages in England, put
down in the unknown wilderness, to work out, under the pressure of
religious enthusiasm, a new social and religious polity. The life
was small, narrow, and squalid, only redeemed from utter sordidness
by gleams of religious idealism and by the stern resolution of the
better class of the settlers to keep themselves and their neighbors
in the paths of righteousness. Their religion was a sombre Calvinism,
giving more prominence to the terrors of the law than to the comforts
of the gospel. Living as they did in scriptural thought, speaking
in scriptural phraseology, dwelling constantly upon the similarity
of their position with that of the children of Israel, it is not
surprising that they should have carried their intense literalism
into every particular. Their external relations, their religious and
political systems, were ruled by the law of Moses as they imagined
it from their somewhat uncritical study of the Old Testament. Their
Christianity was profoundly internal and introspective, something which
was between each individual soul and the Almighty, rather than a law of
social life. The result of this was twofold. They were led to ascribe
to their own convictions the character of divine revelations, and were
also rendered intensely morbid, sometimes exalted above measure and
sometimes as irrationally despondent. They felt that they were the
chosen people of the Lord, doing a great work for him, in “setting
up the candlestick of a pure church in the wilderness to which the
like-minded might resort”; and this feeling led them to believe that
they were especially exposed to the malice and spite of the devil,
who desired to thwart their purpose. They saw special providences in
every common occurrence that made for their welfare or that seemed
to vindicate their theological prejudices, the envy and spite of the
devil in every misadventure or threatening circumstance. Cotton Mather
may be taken as a characteristic specimen of the more intelligent and
devout thinkers among the men of the second generation, and for him the
whole daily life of the colony was a spiritual warfare. The very object
of his greatest work, the “Magnalia Christi,” is to show the special
workings of Divine Providence in favor of the people of Massachusetts,
and to exhibit how they had battled against “principalities and powers,
against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual
wickedness in high places.” The savage Indians were supposed to be
devil-worshippers, and to serve him at their “pow-wows” in the dark
recesses of the unbroken forest. Every storm, every meteor, every
unnatural birth, was a portent.[51] It is not strange that under such
conditions a strong belief in the reality of witchcraft should have
existed, especially when the delusion was general in Europe as well as
in America.
The belief in the power of evil spirits to interfere with man has been
held in every age and in all parts of the world. It is a survival of
that fear of the unseen, which filled the souls of men in those early
ages when, ignorant of the forces of nature, they felt the universe
about them to be hostile and ascribed all unfamiliar sensations to the
agency of some invisible enemy. It is not strange that such a belief
should have arisen. Man’s commonest experiences were those of hostility
and pain; wild animals were hostile, his wilder fellow-men were still
more hostile; from both he suffered injuries that were inflicted
consciously and with evil intent; by analogy--the earliest, as it is
the latest, form of reasoning--the other evils he suffered must be
also the acts of conscious beings. The twinges of rheumatism were no
less real than the pain from the blow of a foeman’s club; it was only
natural to reason that they had been inflicted by an unseen enemy.
The fear of the unseen, so characteristic of primeval man, has left
many traces in language, religion, and custom. Like many another
instinct inherited from savage life, it remains lurking in the human
mind, and at certain times comes to the surface. It has developed
itself in two directions. On the one hand it has led to religion, to a
faith in a supernal Protector with whom the darkness and the light are
both alike; on the other, to a grovelling fear of evil spirits, which
has been the cause of the belief in magic, sorcery, and witchcraft. The
fear of Jehovah was, for Israel and for the world, the beginning of
wisdom. The “seeking unto wizards that peep and mutter” is the parody
of religion, which seems always to exist by its side.
It is probable also that the belief in evil spirits may have had,
in some cases, a different origin. It has been often pointed out on
historical as well as on philological grounds that, in many cases,
the conquest of one tribe by another has degraded the religion of the
conquered into a secondary and dishonorable position. When the Saxon
convert renounced Woden, Thunor, and Saxnote and all their words and
works, the gods of Asgard still remained, in the belief of both convert
and converter, as malignant enemies of Christianity. Whether from a
primitive fear or a degraded polytheism, the result has been the same;
man tends to surround himself with a host of invisible foes.
The monotheistic religions, especially, have waged a bitter warfare
upon this form of polytheism, as derogating from the honors due only
to the highest. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have all declared war
against the witch and the magician, at times by stern legislation,
at times by wise teaching of the unreality and nothingness of the
pretences of those who claim supernatural powers.
Perhaps the most strange fact in the history of the subject, and a
remarkable example of the impossibility of anticipating every result of
an action, is that the very efforts which were made by the enlightened
lawgivers of Israel to eradicate this debasing superstition have been
in later times the provocation of the continued recurrence of the
delusion. The words of the law of Israel have been used to prove the
reality of the existence of the offence it had attempted to obliterate,
while the severity of the punishments employed among a people just
rescued from barbarism has been made an excuse for equal severity under
circumstances the most widely different.
Even now such superstitions are extremely common among the negroes
of the southern portion of the United States, and of the West India
Islands, as they are among the Slavs in Bohemia and Russia, and among
the ignorant in every land. Even among the educated classes there is a
more than half-serious belief in “charms,” “mascots,” and “hoodoos,”
which is laughed at but acted upon. The superstitions about Friday, the
number thirteen, and many others of the same nature, are still acted
upon all over the world, and the belief in the evil eye is not confined
to any one class or nation. Spiritualistic materializations and the
marvels of Hindu theosophy are modern examples of this same recurrence
to the fears and follies of our savage ancestors.
In the seventeenth century, it was only a few emancipated spirits
who did not so believe, and they were looked upon with horror by the
majority of religious men as Sadducees and unbelievers. No less an
authority than King James himself, the British Solomon, had written
a most “learned and painful” treatise to prove the necessity of such
a belief for all Christian people, a treatise in which he expounded
satisfactorily, to himself at least, all the most recondite minutiæ of
the subject.[52]
In his reign, by Act of Parliament, witchcraft had been made
punishable by death,[53] and the scandalous case of Lady Essex’s
divorce had been decided on grounds of “maleficium versus hanc.”[54]
Still more recently, as the wise and godly Baxter relates, during the
period of the Commonwealth, the learned Calamy had looked on with
approval, while Matthew Hopkins, the witch-finder, tortured some
poor wretches, among whom was one unfortunate dispossessed clergyman
of the persecuted Church of England, into confessing revolting
absurdities.[55] Still later, after the Restoration, the usually
judicious Sir Matthew Hale had condemned and burned two women as
witches, in the very Suffolk from which so many of the New Englanders
had come, on evidence of the same character as that upon which American
courts had to decide.[56] If these erred in believing in witchcraft,
they erred in good company, with all the most orthodox teachers of
religion and philosophy in Europe, Protestant and Catholic as well.
Even Selden, who had no belief in witchcraft himself, justified the
severity which was exercised against those condemned of that offence,
by arguing that if a man thought that by turning his hat around and
saying “Buz” he could kill a man, he ought to be put to death if
he made the attempt, no matter how absurd the claim might be. Sir
Thomas Browne, the well-known author of the _Religio Medici_, gave his
testimony as an expert at the trial of the Suffolk witches, upon the
side of the reality of witchcraft.[57] When the student of the early
annals of the Colonies realizes the extent of this superstition, and
at the same time the literal character of the religion of the majority
of the settlers in New England, their bitter hatred of theological
opponents, and their readiness to believe evil in regard to them;
when he appreciates how harsh and mean and unlovely was the life that
most of them lived, and observes that, side by side with an exalted
religious enthusiasm, the lowest and most abhorrent forms of indecency
and vice prevailed, he will no longer be inclined to wonder at the
existence in such a community of the witchcraft delusion, but will
rather be amazed that, with such a people and among such surroundings,
its duration was so short and its victims so few.
Although the crime of witchcraft was especially named in the colonial
statutes, and the penalty of death imposed upon offenders, it was
some time before a case was detected; and the early settlers seem
usually to have acted most cautiously in this matter. Connecticut
has the unenviable pre-eminence of having furnished the first victim,
if Winthrop may be believed. He notes: “One of Windsor was arraigned
and executed in Hartford for a witch” in March, 1646–7.[58] Then
followed, in 1648, the execution of Margaret Jones at Charlestown,
Mass., whose fate Winthrop also describes. She was tested according
to the most approved maxims of witch-finders in England, being
stripped and searched for witch-marks, or the teats by which it was
believed the devil’s imps were nourished. The search paid no regard
to decency, and when the inquisitors found some small excrescence
they were fully satisfied of the guilt of the accused, and she was
accordingly hanged.[59] In the same year the founders of the liberties
of Connecticut put to death, at Hartford, one Mary Johnson, with whom,
it is related, “Mr. Stone labored with such success that she died in
penitence, confessing her abominable crimes of familiarity with the
devil.”[60] In 1650, a Mistress Lake was hanged at Dorchester, and a
Mistress Kendall at Cambridge, showing that not all the superstitious
had migrated from those places to Hartford and Windsor.[61] In 1651,
Mary Parsons of Springfield was hanged for infanticide; she was
generally accused of being a witch, but on trial before the General
Court was cleared, owing to the insufficiency of the testimony;[62]
and Hugh Parsons, her husband, who was tried and found guilty by the
Court of Assistants in 1652, was re-tried and acquitted by the General
Court, “which, after perusing and considering the evidence, ... judged
that he was not legally guilty of witchcraft, and so not to dye by
law.”[63] These instances of careful examination, as well as the small
number of the cases, show that in the first twenty-five years there was
no general panic, and that the authorities were inclined to proceed
with a deliberation which contrasts very favorably with the tone of
feeling in England at this time. In 1651, Goodwife Bassett was hanged
at Stratford,[64] and John Carrington and his wife of Wethersfield,
probably at Hartford,[65] and in 1653, Goodwife Knapp suffered at
Fairfield.[66] In Massachusetts there were no more cases until 1656, in
which year Mistress Hibbins, a woman of position, whose husband had sat
as an assistant at some of the earlier trials, was hanged in Boston.
It is noticeable in her case that though the magistrates had refused
to accept the verdict of the first jury that had found her guilty, the
General Court, to whom the case came in regular course, condemned
her.[67] Her execution shocked the wiser portion of the community, and
even men of the narrow religious views of Norton and Wilson, though
they did not venture openly to oppose the popular demand for her life,
were heard to say in private that they had hanged a woman whose chief
offence was in having more wit than her neighbors.[68]
After her death there were no more executions in Massachusetts for over
thirty years, though the increasing frequency of marvellous occurrences
and suspicious cases promised ill for the future. Good sense as yet
controlled public affairs, in this direction at least. In Connecticut
witch-finding still continued; in 1558 the wife of Joseph Garlick of
Easthampton (L. I.) was tried for this offence; in 1659 there was an
alarm in Saybrook; and in 1662, one Goody Greensmith of Hartford was
convicted, on her own confession, of having had carnal intercourse
with the devil, and was hanged for the offence; two other women were
condemned with her but “made their escape”; her husband was not so
fortunate and was put to death. Mary Barnes of Farmington was indicted
January 6th, 1662–3, and was probably executed with the Greensmiths.[69]
Other cases occurred, but it is believed that this was the last
execution for witchcraft in Connecticut. The Gallows Hill in Hartford
was, however, long remembered, and has not even yet lost its unsavory
reputation. The political changes incident to the reception of
the charter, by which the colony of New Haven was calmly absorbed
by its astute and ambitious neighbor, seem to have occupied men’s
minds sufficiently to keep them from any great amount of activity
in this direction. Yet, in 1665, Elizabeth Seger was found guilty
of witchcraft at Hartford, but set at liberty, and, 1669, Katharine
Harrison of Wethersfield was tried and condemned; the verdict, however,
was overruled and the prisoner released by the Special Court of
Assistants;[70] four women were tried in 1692, at Fairfield, one of
whom was condemned to death, but not executed; two women were indicted
at Wallingford, and a woman was tried at Hartford as late as 1697, but
acquitted.[71] It has sometimes been said that the arrival of Andros
and the loss of the charter in 1687 was the only thing that prevented a
serious outbreak of the delusion in Connecticut.
When the delusion revived in Massachusetts it was with increased
force and virulence. Its recrudescence may be directly traced to
the publication and general circulation in the colony of a book by
Increase Mather, entitled “An Essay for the recording of Illustrious
Providences,” etc., which contained a detailed account of all the
marvels that Divine benevolence or wrath had wrought in the last thirty
or forty years.[72] At about the same time appeared the account of the
trials in England under Sir Matthew Hale[73] and of the remarkable
mania which had raged in Sweden in 1669.[74] These horrible stories
became the subject of conversation, of meditation in private, and of
sermon and prayer in public. They were apparently read or related to
the young as edifying and instructive literature; for, from this time
forward, children in New England began to repeat the phenomena that had
prevailed on the other side of the Atlantic.
The colony was in a very excited and discontented condition. The
beloved patent upon which the Commonwealth of Massachusetts had been so
boldly reared had been taken away from them, and they had been brought
under the government of England. Their “purity of doctrine” was more
than threatened, as not only had they been compelled to desist from
persecuting Quakers, but they had also been constrained to allow the
hated _Book of Common Prayer_ to be read in public, and to permit men
to worship God according to its rubrical provisions. More than this,
the king’s governor had actually polluted one of their meeting-houses
by using it for the performance of the services of the national church.
It seemed indeed to many of the men who were now prominent in the room
of their wiser fathers, that Satan was making a desperate attack upon
the colony; and their minds were predisposed to believe any marvels the
result of diabolical agency.
The first manifestation of the revived delusion appeared in 1688, in
the family of John Goodwin, a sober and prosperous mechanic of Boston.
His children, all of whom were said to be remarkable for “ingenuity
of character,” and who had been religiously brought up, and were
“thought to be without guile,” suddenly exhibited the most alarming
symptoms. One of them, a young girl, had given some offence to an old
Irishwoman of bad character, and had been repaid with vigorous abuse
and vituperation. Shortly afterwards she began to fall into fits, which
were deemed by her friends and neighbors to have something diabolical
about them. Soon the same complaint attacked also her sister and her
two brothers, and the terrified observers reported that they were all
“tormented in the same part of their bodies at the same time, though
kept in separate apartments, and ignorant of one another’s complaints.”
They were free from trouble at night and slept well. Their afflictions
always came on in the daytime and in public. Their diabolical visitants
were apparently instructed in theology, and displayed a depraved taste
in literature that was intensely scandalizing to the pious Cotton
Mather, who interested himself most deeply in the strange affliction
of the children. He relates that they would throw the children into
a senseless condition if they but looked on the outside of such good
books as the _Assembly’s Catechism_ or Cotton’s _Milk for Babes_, while
they might read with complete impunity _Oxford Jests_, popish or Quaker
books, or the _Book of Common Prayer_.[75] The other symptoms were yet
more alarming, physically, if not spiritually. “Sometimes they would
be deaf, then dumb, then blind, and sometimes all these disorders
together would come upon them. Their tongues would be drawn down
their throats, then pulled out upon their chins. Their jaws, necks,
shoulders, elbows, and all their joints would appear to be dislocated,
and they would make most piteous outcries of burnings, of being cut
with knives, beat, etc., and the marks of wounds were afterwards to
be seen.” The ministers of Boston and Charlestown came to the house,
and kept there a day of fasting and prayer, with the happy result of
curing the youngest of the children. The others continued as before;
and then, the clergy having failed, the magistrates took up the case.
The old woman whose violent tongue had apparently had some connection
with the first outbreak of the complaint, was arrested and thrown into
prison, and charged with witchcraft. She would neither deny or confess,
but “appeared to be disordered in mind,” and insisted on talking
Gaelic, though she had been able to talk English before. The physicians
examined her, and reported that she was _compos mentis_, and on their
report the poor creature was hanged--a serious blot on the usually
judicious administration of Sir Edmund Andros; so unlike him that one
is inclined to suspect he must have been absent from Boston when this
foolish crime was perpetrated. The children gradually recovered, grew
up, “experienced religion” in the usual way, and never confessed to any
fault or deceit in the matter. Hutchinson writes that he knew one of
them in after years, who had the character of a very sober, virtuous
woman.[76]
As these cases may be referred to the circulation of the record of the
former marvels and illustrious providences, so now in their turn they
became the provoking causes of many others; for a full and particular
account of these was printed, first in Boston, and then, almost
immediately afterward, in London, with an introduction from no less a
person than Richard Baxter. This, together with the other relations,
was circulated throughout the colony, and led to a still greater
outbreak of the delusion.[77] Men thought about witches and talked
about witches, and very naturally soon came to believe that all the
accidents and disasters and diseases, which they could not explain by
common natural causes, were the result of demoniac agency.
The strong rule of Andros had ended in revolution and disturbance; but,
much to their disappointment, the people had been obliged to accept a
new charter under which the rule of the hierarchy was still restrained
by the appointment of the governor by the crown. The leaders, astute
as ever, succeeded in securing the appointment of Sir William Phips,
an ignorant and underbred sailor, hoping to be able to influence him
easily, and thus to continue their authority. The lieutenant-governor
was Stoughton, one of themselves, whose narrowness of mind and bitter
prejudices made him a man upon whom they could rely implicitly. But
before the charter arrived, the colony was thrown into a ferment of
excitement by the dreadful occurrences at Salem village (now Danvers),
which, to the minds of the majority of the population, indicated
unquestionably that the enemy of souls was making a most desperate
attack upon the community.
The trouble broke out in the family of the minister of the village,
Parris by name, who had shortly before had serious difficulties with
some of his congregation.[78] His daughter and his niece, girls ten or
eleven years old, began to make the same complaints that had been made
by the Goodwin children in Boston three years before. The physicians
found themselves at a loss, and hence were quite convinced that the
ailments were supernatural, and declared that the children were
bewitched. An Indian woman named Tituba, a servant in the house, tried
some experiments of a somewhat disgusting nature, which she claimed
would discover who the witch was that was tormenting them. When the
girls knew what she had done, they immediately cried out that Tituba
appeared to them, pricking and tormenting them, and straightway fell
into convulsions. The woman, alarmed at this, confessed what she had
been doing, but stoutly maintained that, though she knew how to find
out witches she herself was none. The condition of the children excited
much attention, and the more they were investigated the worse they
grew, and soon several others were seized with the same symptoms. These
all had their fits, and when in them would accuse not only the Indian
woman, but also two old half-witted crones in the neighborhood, one of
whom was bed-ridden as well as imbecile. The three were committed to
prison, where Tituba confessed that she was a witch and accused the
others of being her confederates. They soon had company in the jail, as
two others, women of character and position, Mistress Cory and Mistress
Nurse, were complained of; and when they were brought to examination,
all the children “fell into their fits” and insisted that the accused
were tormenting them. The women naturally denied this outrageous
charge, but in spite of their denial were committed to prison, and with
them, so great was the infatuation and panic, a little child of only
four years of age, who, as some of the girls insisted, “kept biting
them with her little sharp teeth.”
Panic, like rumor, thrives by what it feeds on; and from day to day new
victims were accused and committed, until the prisons were crowded.
More than a hundred women, many of them of good character and belonging
to respectable families in Salem, Andover, Ipswich and Billerica, were
arrested, and after an examination, usually conducted by Parris, were
thrown into the jails to await their formal trial.[79] Many of these,
in order to escape, confessed whatever they were charged with, and
generally in their confessions tried to win favor for themselves by
accusing some one else.[80] Neighborhood quarrels, old sores, spite,
envy, and jealousy added their bitterness to the prevailing madness.
It seems incredible that any rational beings could have been found to
give credence to the farrago of nonsense that was solemnly sworn to;
yet it was the most marvellous tales that found the readiest credence.
One confession may be cited as a sample, to illustrate what was the
force of panic terror in the midst of this apparently civilized
community.[81]
“The examination and confession (8 Sept. 92) of Mary Osgood, wife
of Captain Osgood of Andover, taken before John Hawthorne and other
their Majesties justices.
“She confesses that about 11 years ago, when she was in a
melancholy state and condition, she would walk abroad in her
orchard; and upon a certain time she saw the appearance of a cat,
at the end of the house, which yet she thought was a real cat.
However, at that time it diverted her from praying to God, and,
instead thereof, she prayed to the devil; about which time she
made a covenant with the devil, who, as a black man, came to her,
and presented to her a book, upon which she laid her finger, and
that left a red spot. And that upon her signing, the devil told
her he was her God, and that she should serve and worship him,
and, she believes, she consented unto it. She says further, that
about two years agone, she was carried through the air, in company
with Deacon Frye’s wife, Ebenezer Baker’s wife, and Goody Tyler,
to Five-Mile Pond, where she was baptized by the devil, who dipped
her face in the water and made her renounce her former baptism, and
told her that she must be his, soul and body, forever, and that she
must serve him, which she promised to do. She says ... that she
was transported back again through the air, in company with the
forenamed persons, in the same manner as she went, and believes she
was carried upon a pole.... She confesses she has afflicted three
persons, John Sawdy, Martha Sprague, and Rose Foster, and that she
did it by pinching her bed-clothes and giving consent the devil
should do it in her shape, and the devil could not do without her
consent. She confesses the afflicting persons in the court by the
glance of her eye.... _Q._ Who taught you this way of witchcraft?
_A._ Satan, and that he promised her abundance of satisfaction and
quietness in her future state, but never performed anything; and
that she has lived more miserably and more discontented since than
ever before. She confesses further, that she herself, in company
with Goody Parker, Goody Tyler, and Goody Dean, had a meeting at
Moses Tyler’s house, last Monday night, to afflict, and that she
and Goody Dean carried the shape of Mr. Dean, the minister, to
make persons believe that Mr. Dean afflicted. _Q._ What hindered
you from accomplishing what you intended? _A._ The Lord would
not suffer it to be that the devil should afflict in an innocent
person’s shape.[82] _Q._ Have you been at any other witch meetings?
_A._ I know nothing thereof, as I shall answer in the presence
of God and of His people: but said that the black man stood
before her, and told her, that what she had confessed was a lie;
notwithstanding, she said that what she had confessed was true,
and thereto put her hand. Her husband being present, was asked if
he judged his wife to be any way discomposed. He answered that
having lived with her so long he doth not judge her to be any ways
discomposed, but has cause to believe what she has said is true.”
When the new charter arrived and the new government went into
operation, the Governor and Council appointed Commissions of Oyer and
Terminer for the trial of witchcrafts. Their action was of more than
questionable legality, as by the charter the power of constituting
courts of justice was reserved to the General Assembly, while the
Governor and Council had only the right of appointing judges and
commissioners in courts thus constituted. The Court, however, was
established, and was opened at Salem in the first week of June
1692.[83] At its first session only one of the accused was brought
to trial, an old woman, Bridget Bishop by name, who had lived on bad
terms with all her neighbors, and consequently had no friends. She had
been charged with witchcraft twenty years before, and although her
accuser had acknowledged on his death-bed that his accusation had been
false and malicious, the stigma of the charge had always remained.
Consequently all the losses her neighbors had met with, in cattle,
swine, or poultry, all the accidents or unusual sicknesses they had
had, were attributed to her spite against them, and were now brought
forward as evidence against her. This testimony, together with the
charges made by the possessed children, who continued to reveal new
horrors from day to day, and the confessions of other women who to
save themselves accused her, was confirmed to the satisfaction of the
Court by the discovery of a “preternatural excrescence,” and she was
convicted and executed.[84] The further trials were postponed until
the end of the month, and in the interval the Governor and Council
consulted the ministers of the province as to the proper course to
pursue. In their reply they recommended caution and discretion, but
concluded their advice by saying, “Nevertheless we cannot but humbly
recommend unto the government the speedy and vigorous prosecutions of
such as have rendered themselves obnoxious, according to the direction
given in the laws of God and the wholesome statutes of the English
nation for the detection of witchcrafts.”[85]
The ministers had as little doubt of the laws of England being
available for their purpose as they had of what they considered to
be the laws of God; yet it is very doubtful whether, at the time of
Bishop’s trial and execution, there was any law in existence which
authorized their proceedings. The old colonial law was no longer in
force; and witchcraft not being an offence at common law, the only law
by which their action could be justified was the statute of James I.,
which must therefore have been considered as in force in the colony.
It is probable that the execution was utterly illegal. Before the next
cases were tried, the old colonial statute was revived and made again
the law of the province.
The trials were resumed in July, and were conducted in the same manner
as in the case of Bishop, but with even greater harshness. In one case,
that of Mrs. Nurse, the perversion of justice was most scandalous. The
accusations were so absurd, and her character and position so good,
that the jury brought in a verdict of not guilty. So great, however,
was the indignation of the populace, and so serious the dissatisfaction
of the Court, that the cowardly jurors asked permission to go out
a second time, and then brought in a verdict of guilty, which was
accepted. The poor woman, whose deafness had prevented her hearing and
answering some of the most serious charges, was solemnly excommunicated
by Mr. Noyes, the minister of Salem, and formally delivered over to
Satan, and, with four others, was hanged. It was long remembered that
when one of them was told at the gallows by Noyes that he knew she was
a witch, and that she had better confess, and not be damned as well as
hanged, she replied that he lied, that she was no more a witch than he
was a wizard, and that, if he took away her life, God would give him
blood to drink;[86] and it was believed in Salem that the prediction
was literally fulfilled, and that Noyes came to his death by breaking a
blood-vessel in his lungs, and was choked with his own blood.
It would be needlessly revolting to relate the details of the
subsequent trials, in which the Court, driven by the popular panic
and the prevailing religious ideas, perverted justice and destroyed
the innocent.[87] Nineteen persons in all were executed, all of whom,
without exception, died professing their innocence and forgiving their
murderers, and thus refused to save their lives by confessing crimes
which they had not committed and could not possibly commit.[88] Besides
those who suffered for witchcraft, one other, Giles Cory, was put to
death with the utmost barbarity. When arraigned for trial he refused
to plead, and was condemned to the _peine forte et dure_, the only
time this infamous torture was ever inflicted in America. It consisted
in placing the contumacious person on a hard floor, and then piling
weight after weight upon him, until he consented to plead or was
crushed to death. A nearly contemporary account relates that when, in
the death agony, the poor wretch’s tongue protruded from his mouth,
the sheriff with his cane pushed it in again; and local tradition and
ballad told how in his torment he cried for “more rocks” to be heaped
on him to put him out of his misery.[89] This was the last of the
executions. The Court of Oyer and Terminer sat no more, and in the
interval between its adjournment and the opening of the sessions of the
“Supreme Standing Court,” in the following January, time was given for
consideration and reflection.[90]
But it may be questioned whether consideration and reflection would
have put a stop to the delusion without the operation of another and
more powerful cause. Thus far, the accused persons had been generally
of insignificant position, friendless old women, or men who had either
affronted their neighbors or, by the irregularity of their lives,
had lost the sympathy of the community.[91] But with their success,
the boldness or the madness of the accusers increased; some of the
most prominent people in the colony, distinguished in many cases by
unblemished lives, were now charged with dealings with the devil,
and even the wife of the Governor fell under suspicion. The community
came at last to its senses, and began to realize that the evidence,
which till then had seemed conclusive, was not worthy of attention.
Confessions were withdrawn, and the testimony of neighbors to good
character and life was at length regarded as of greater weight than the
ravings of hysterical girls or the malice of private enemies. So it
came about that before long those who were not prejudiced and committed
by the part they had played, acknowledged that they had been condemning
the innocent and bringing blood-guiltiness upon the land. Even Cotton
Mather, who had been largely responsible for the spread of the
delusion, was compelled to admit that mistakes had been made, though
he still maintained that if a further investigation had been held in
the cases of many who were set free, their guilt might have been made
apparent. Some that had served on the juries that had condemned the
victims put forth a paper admitting their delusion and begging pardon
of God and man for their mistake.[92] The impressive story of Sewall’s
penitence, and public confession of his fault in the South Church in
Boston, is well known; more consistent and logical was the declaration
of the stern-tempered Stoughton, that when he sat in judgment he had
the fear of God before his eyes, and gave his opinion according to the
best of his understanding; and, although it might appear afterwards
that he had been in error, yet he saw no necessity for a public
acknowledgment of it.[93]
Parris, whose part in these acts of folly and delusion had been the
most prominent of all, and who was strongly suspected of having
used the popular frenzy to ruin some of his personal antagonists,
was compelled to resign his position and leave the people whom he
had so grossly misled.[94] Noyes, whose delusion had been at least
sincere, made public confession of his fault, and was forgiven by his
congregation and by the community that had erred with him. Thus ended
one of the most painful episodes in the early history of New England.
The other colonies in America were not so entirely free from this
superstition that they should reproach the Puritans for it as a special
and peculiar product of their religious system. There were cases in New
York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, though there is no record
of any one having been put to death for the offence in those colonies.
In Pennsylvania, under the prudent instructions of William Penn, who
seems to have been less superstitious than the Massachusetts Quakers,
the jury brought in a verdict that the person accused was guilty of
“being suspected of being a witch,” and, fortunately, at that time
suspicion was not punishable.[95] In New York, a certain Ralf Hall and
his wife were tried in 1665, but were acquitted, and an attempt, in
1670, to create an excitement in Westchester over Katharine Harrison,
who had moved thither from Connecticut, was sternly suppressed.[96]
There were trials for witchcraft in Maryland in the last quarter of the
seventeenth century; and in Virginia in 1705, thirteen years later than
the Salem trials, a witch was ducked by order of court.[97]
It is hard to decide how much of all this was panic and how much
deliberate fraud and imposture. There is no reason to suspect anything
worse than pure superstition in the early cases in Massachusetts and
Connecticut; but the marvellous attacks of the Goodwin children in
Boston and of the Parris girls in Salem seem to belong to a different
category.[98] It is almost incredible that the girl who played so
cleverly upon the vanity and the theological prejudices of Cotton
Mather was not fully aware of what she was doing; and the fact that the
Parris children accused persons with whom their father had previously
had trouble, renders their delusion extremely suspicious. The great
St. Benedict is reported to have cured a brother who was possessed by
the devil by thrashing him soundly; and it is much to be regretted
that the Protestantism of the New Englanders prevented their knowing
and experimenting with the saint’s specific, which, in all ages of the
world, has been admitted to be wonderfully efficacious. It has been
held by many that the testimony at Salem was deliberately fabricated;
Hutchinson, writing at a time when men who could remember the trials
were yet living, is strongly of that opinion. The case does not,
however, seem as clear as that of the Goodwins; and of them Hutchinson,
as has been said, reports that they were estimable women who had never
acknowledged any deception on their part.
The phenomena of mental disease are so strange and complicated that
at the present day men are not as ready to set everything down to
fraud as they were a hundred years ago. It is possible to account
psychologically for all the phenomena recorded, without being obliged
to adopt any very violent hypothesis. Even if at the outset the
children in either case were pretending, it is quite as conceivable
that they should have passed from pretence of nervous symptoms to the
reality, as it is to think that absolute fraud would pass so long
undetected. The symptoms described are such as would be recognized by
any alienist to-day, and could be duplicated out of the current medical
journals. It may also be noticed that many of the possessed were girls
just coming to maturity, and thus of an age when the nervous system was
passing through a period of strain.
The rapidity with which the panic spread was most remarkable, and it
is painful to notice the abject terror into which the population was
thrown. Parents accused their children, and children their parents,
and, in one case at least, a wife her husband. Some men were tied
neck and heels until they would confess and accuse others.[99] It
was a period of the most pitiful mental and spiritual cowardice, and
those that were most directly responsible for the shameful condition
of affairs were men who, from their learning and their position,
should have been the leaders and sustainers of the popular conscience
in soberness of mind and charity. But the ministers of New England
had emphasized the necessity of a belief in witchcraft as a part of
the Divine revelation. The Old Testament spoke of witches, and had
said, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” while the New Testament
supplied the idea of diabolical possession; hence they argued, with
a style of argument not yet disused, that any one who denied the
existence of witchcraft was a Sadducee and an impugner of the truth
of God’s Word. Soon the reasoning was extended to prove that any
one who denied that the particular phenomena under discussion were
caused by witchcraft was an enemy of religion. The ministers, as has
been said, have an unenviable prominence in the accounts of this
disastrous delusion. They were as forward in destroying the witches as
their predecessors had been in persecuting the Quakers. They hounded
on the judges and juries in their bloody work, they increased the
popular excitement by their public fasts and prayers and sermons, they
insulted the victims on the scaffold. It is no wonder that, under such
leadership, the population was excited to madness. It was only when
they found their own families and friends accused by those on whose
testimony others as innocent had been destroyed, that they were able to
recognize that the accusations were absurd and the evidence worthless.
Yet it may be said on their behalf that they were not really as far in
advance of the majority of their contemporaries as they imagined they
were, and it is to their credit that, when their eyes were opened, they
were opened thoroughly and not closed again. Cases of witchcraft now
disappeared from New England, while in other lands, where there was
the same sombre Calvinism but less enlightenment, as in Scotland, the
delusion continued for many years.[100]
The theological spirit now devoted itself to barren questions of
little moment, around which wordy battles raged and hatreds developed,
only less destructive than those in the previous century because
the divines were no longer the rulers of the state. Religion sank
into a barren formalism, which had no noble or time-honored forms to
redeem it from utter indifference. From this deplorable condition
it was roused by three influences which led to a spiritual revival:
the Episcopal movement in Connecticut, the preaching and writings
of Jonathan Edwards in western Massachusetts, and the preaching of
Whitefield. The dry bones once more lived, and the descendants of the
Puritans manifest by their earnest activity and deep spirituality how
stout and strong was the stock from which they have inherited many of
their most precious characteristics. They may be thankful that the old
bigotry has not returned, and that they are now saved from all danger
of interfering with public affairs by the complete separation of church
and state.
Panic terror of the supernatural, whenever it has occurred, has been
a parody of the prevailing form of religion. When the religious ideas
are at once narrow and introspective, when the social life is poor and
unsatisfying, and when there is also a profound ignorance of bodily and
mental physiology, we have the combined conditions for the ready and
serious development of religious panic. Such were the circumstances
of the witchcraft delusion that followed the religious revival due to
the preaching of the Franciscan friars; such were the circumstances in
Sweden in the seventeenth century, and in Scotland in the eighteenth;
such were the circumstances in New England at the period we have
considered. The isolated cases which appeared in various countries
from time to time were the result of superstition and ignorance. That
they did not cause a panic may be attributed in some cases to the
better social condition; in others, to the presence in the community
of men of sense and character who prevented the spread of delusion and
calmed, instead of exciting, the minds of their fellows. It is one
of the saddest features of the Salem trials, that though prominent
men whose influence might have been expected to be exercised on the
side of soberness, disbelieved in the reality of the “possession”
and criticised privately the methods employed, yet they allowed the
delusion to proceed to its tragical extent without interposing their
authority to prevent or at least to denounce it. Brattle, in his
account of the delusion, written in October 1692, mentions many by name
who agreed with him in condemning the proceedings of the justices in
Salem, and the judges of the Court of Oyer and Terminer, but looked on
while the unfortunates were tormented into confession and put to death
at the demand of popular frenzy.[101]
Though we talk of the progress that the race has made in learning
and enlightenment, it is alarming to notice how ineradicable are the
superstitions of mankind, how germs which men deem dead really lurk
dormant for ages, and then develop themselves with startling rapidity
when they find the proper menstruum. Man, like other animals, seems to
exhibit a tendency from time to time to revert to the original type,
and to reproduce the physiognomy of long-perished races, with their
fears and their hatreds, their low spiritual conceptions and their
dominant animal passions. It is the work of education, of civilization,
and of religion to strive against this tendency. We can only hope that
as men have, in spite of this, made steady progress in many directions,
and have conquered and are conquering the animal that is in them,
they may in time get the better of all the evil legacies which their
primeval ancestors have bequeathed them. Modern science has removed
the fear of the plague in all civilized countries and is lessening the
danger of the cholera; in like manner, we may hope the old terrors will
also in time be swept away, and man be freed from any danger of their
recurrence.
NOTES.
[51] Even Winthrop, the governor of Massachusetts, wise and good as he
was, recorded in his _History_ his direful forebodings occasioned by
the appearance of a monstrosity which the unfortunate Mary Dyer, who
was afterwards hanged as a Quaker, had brought into the world. _History
of New England_, i. 261–3.
[52] _Demonologie, in forme of a dialogue_, 1st Ed., Edinburgh, 1597,
4to.
[53] 1 Jac. I. c. 12.
[54] _State Trials_, vol. ii. pp. 786–862.
[55] Baxter, Richard, D. D., _The Certainty of the Worlds of Spirits_,
p. 53.
[56] _A Tryal of Witches_, printed 1682, published with a treatise of
Sir Matthew Hale’s on _Sheriffs’ Accompts_, London, 1683. Sir Matthew’s
charge was to the following effect: “That he would not repeat the
Evidence unto them, least by so doing he should wrong the Evidence on
the one side or on the other. Only this acquainted them, That they had
Two things to enquire after. _First_, whether or no these children were
bewitched? _Secondly_, whether the Prisoners at the Bar were Guilty
of it. That there were such Creatures as Witches he made no doubt at
all; For, _First_, the Scriptures had affirmed so much. _Secondly_, The
Wisdom of all Nations had provided laws against such persons, which is
an argument of their confidence in such a Crime. And such hath been the
judgment of this Kingdom, as appears by that Act of Parliament which
hath provided Punishments proportionable to the quality of the offense.
And desired them strictly to observe their Evidence; and desired the
great God of Heaven to direct their Hearts in this weighty thing they
had in hand: For to condemn the Innocent, and to let the Guilty go
free, were both an abomination unto the Lord.” (pp. 55, 56.)
[57] _A Tryal of Witches_, pp. 41, 42.
[58] Winthrop, ii. 307. Stiles, _Ancient Windsor_, i. 447.
[59] Winthrop, ii. 326. Hutchinson, _Hist. of Massachusets-Bay_
(London, 1765–1768), i. 150. _Mass. Rec._, ii. 242, iii. 126, seems to
refer to this case, though no names are given.
[60] Mather, Cotton, _Late Memorable Providences_, pp. 62–65.
_Magnalia_, Book vi. ch. 7.
[61] W. S. Poole, in _Memorial History of Boston_, ii. 133 note.
Hutchinson, ii. 10.
[62] _Mass. Rec._, iv. (1), 47, 48.
[63] _Mass. Rec._, i. (1), 96.
[64] _Conn. Colonial Records_, i. 220; _cf._ _New Haven Col. Rec._, ii.
78.
[65] _History of Hartford County (Conn.), Sketch of Wethersfield_, by
S. Adams.
[66] _New Haven Col. Rec._, ii. 78. Lydia Gilbert, of Windsor, was
indicted for witchcraft, March 24th, 1653–4, but there is no record of
the issue of her trial. Stiles, _Ancient Windsor_, i. 449, 450.
[67] _Mass. Records_, iv. (1), 269.
[68] Hutchinson, i. 187, 188.
[69] _Conn. Col. Rec._, i. 573. Mather, _Remarkable Providences_, 139.
Walker, Geo. Leon, D. D., _History of the First Church in Hartford_.
Hutchinson, ii. 16, 17.
[70] Judd, _History of Hadley_, 233. _Conn. Col. Rec._, ii. 172. For
her subsequent troubles in N. Y., _Documentary Hist. of N.Y._, iv. 87.
[71] Calef, _More Wonders of the Invisible World_. _Conn. Col. Rec._,
iii. p. v. and 76, 77 _note_.
[72] Hutchinson, ii. p. 18. “But in 1685, a very circumstantial account
of all or most of the cases I have mentioned was published, and many
arguments were brought to convince the country that they were no
delusions nor impostures, but the effects of a familiarity between the
devil and such as he found fit for his instruments.”
[73] _A Tryal of Witches_, London, 1682.
[74] Horneck, in Glanvil’s _Saducismus Triumphatus_, London, 1681.
[75] It will be remembered, that much against the will of the Puritan
leaders, they had been compelled by the royal authority to allow
the use of the service of the Church of England, which they and
their friends in England had fancied some years before that they had
destroyed. For a similar instance of combined bigotry and superstition,
_cf._ Winthrop’s history of the mice and the Prayer Books. _Hist. of
New England_, ii. 20.
[76] Mather, Cotton, D. D., _Late Memorable Providences_. _Magnalia
Christi_, Book vi. ch. 8. Hutchinson, ii. 20.
[77] _Late Memorable Providences_, London, 1691; 2d Impression. Calef,
_More Wonders of the Invisible World_, postscript.
[78] Calef, _More Wonders_, p. 90. Hutchinson, ii. 11. Upham, _The
Salem Witchcraft_.
[79] Brattle, _Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections_, v. 62, 70, 71. The way
in which Parris conducted the investigations may be seen from the
following extracts from the examination of Elizabeth How, May 31st,
1692:
“Mercy Lewis and Mary Walcot fell in a fit quickly after the examinant
came in. Mary Walcot said that this woman the examinant had pincht her
& choakt this mouth. Ann Putnam said that she had hurt her three times.
What say you to this charge? Here are three that charge you with
witchcraft.
If it was the last moment I was to live, God knows I am innocent of
anything in this nature.
Did you not take notice that now when you lookt upon Mercy Lewis she
was struck down?
I cannot help it.
You are charged here. What doe you say?
I am innocent of anything of this nature.
Is this the first time that ever you were accused?
Yes, Sir.
Do you not know that one at Ipswich hath accused you?
This is the first time that ever I heard of it.
You say that you never heard of these folks before.
Mercy Lewis at length spake and charged this woman of with hurting and
pinching her.
And then Abigail Williams cryed she hath hurt me a great many times, a
great while & she hath brought me the book.
Ann Putnam had a pin stuck in her hand. What do you say to this?
I cannot help it.
What consent have you given?
Mercy Warren cryed out she was prickt & great prints were seen in her
arms.
Have you not seen some apparition?
No, never in all my life.
Those that have confessed they tell us they used images and pins, now
tell us what you have used.
You would not have me confess that which I know not.
She lookt upon Mary Warren & said Warren violently fell down.
Look upon this maid viz: Mary Walcot, her back being towards the
Examinant.
Mary Warren and Ann Putnam said they saw this woman upon her. Susan
Sheldon saith this was the woman that carryed her yesterday to the
Pond. Sus. Sheldon carried to the examinant in a fit & was well upon
grasping her arm.
You said you never heard before of these people.
Not before the warrant was served upon me last Sabbath day.
John Indian cryed out Oh she bites & fell into a grievous fit & so
carried to her in his fit, & was well upon her grasping him.
What do you say to these things? they cannot come to you.
I am not able to give account of it.
Cannot you tell what keeps them off from your body?
I cannot tell, I know not what it is.
That is strange that you should do these things & not be able to tell
how.
This is a true copy of the examination of Eliz. How taken from my
characters written at the time thereof.
Witness my hand
Sam. Parris.”
Woodward, _Records of Salem Witchcraft_, II., 69–94.
[80] Brattle, _ut supra_, 65, 72, 78.
[81] This confession is cited from Hutchinson, _History of
Massachusets-Bay_, ii. pp. 31–33.
[82] This was the commonly received opinion, and though opposed
by Increase Mather, was much insisted on by Stoughton, the
lieutenant-governor, and proved the destruction of many; as, if an
innocent person could not be personated, it followed that those who
were accused by the possessed were certainly guilty. _Cf._ Brattle,
_Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections_, vol. v. 61 ff., on spectral evidence,
and the bigotry and unfairness of Stoughton. Increase Mather, _Some
Cases of Conscience concerning Evil Spirits_.
[83] Hutchinson, ii. 49. Mather, Cotton, _Wonders of the Invisible
World_, 65–70.
[84] It is interesting, though painful, to find as a prominent witness
against Bishop, one Samuel Shattuck, the son of the Quaker who, thirty
years before, had delivered to Endicott the order from Charles II.
which had freed himself and his friends from the extremes of Puritan
cruelty.
[85] Mather, Increase, D. D., _Cases of Conscience concerning Evil
Spirits_, Postscript.
[86] Calef, _More Wonders of the Invisible World_.
[87] Brattle, _Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections_, v. 66, 67. The case
of Elizabeth How, mentioned above, is a good example of the way in
which neighborhood quarrels and church quarrels were dragged in. She
had had a falling out with a family by the name of Perley some two
years before, and they now came forward with depositions that she
had bewitched their cows so that they gave no milk, and one of their
children so that it pined away. “After this,” swears Samuel Perley,
“the abovesaid goode how had a mind to ioyn to ipswich church thai
being unsatisfied sent to us to bring in what we had against her and
when we had declared to them what we knew thai see cause to Put a stop
to her coming into the church. Within a few dais after I had a cow wel
in the morning as far as we knew this cow was taken strangli runing
about like a mad thing a litle while and then run into a great Pon and
drowned herself and as sone as she was dead mi sons and miself towed
her to the shore, and she stunk so that we had much a doe to flea her.”
The ministers of Rowley investigated the case of the Perley child, and
were evidently convinced that the parents had put the idea into the
child’s head, and gave plain testimony to that effect, and several
neighbors came forward with testimony to the prisoner’s good character.
But a fresh collection of marvels was adduced by a family of the name
of Comins or Cummins who accused her of bewitching their horses,
and other neighbors, not to be outdone, testified to other strange
occurrences, and the court condemned her and she was executed on the
sixteenth of July. She was, however, only convicted upon the evidence
obtained in Parris’s investigation, though the testimony of her Ipswich
neighbors undoubtedly had great weight with the jury. The other
trials are of much the same character, some revealing a most fiendish
animosity on the part of neighbors or relatives, and leaving a very
painful impression of the condition of country life in New England at
that time. For testimony as to the cowardice of friends and neighbors
and the confessions extorted from weak-minded persons, see letter of
Francis Dane, Sen.; Woodward, _Records_, II., 66–68.
[88] Brattle, _ut supra_ 68, 69.
[89] Drake, _Annals of Witchcraft_, 193.
[90] Increase Mather says: “In _December_ the court sat again at
_Salem_ in _New England_, and cleared about 40 persons suspected for
witches, and condemned three. The evidence against these was the same
as formerly, so the Warrant for their Execution was sent, and the
_Graves digged_ for the said three, and for about five more that had
been condemned at _Salem_ formerly, but were Repreived by the Governour.
In the beginning of _February_, 1693, the Court sate at Charlestown,
where the Judge exprest himself to this effect. _That who it was
that obstructed the Execution of Justice, or hindered those good
proceedings they had made, he knew not, but thereby the Kingdom of
Satan was advanc’d, etc. and the Lord have mercy on this Country_;
and so declined coming any more into Court. In his absence Mr. D----
sate as Chief Judge 3 several days, in which time 5 or 6 were cleared
by Proclamation, and almost as many by Trial; so that all were
acquitted....
So that by the _Goodness of God_ we are once more out of present danger
of this Hobgoblin monster; the standing evidence used at _Salem_ were
called, but did not appear.
There were others also at Charlestown brought upon their Tryals,
who had formerly confessed themselves to be witches; but upon their
Tryals deny’d it; and were all cleared; So that at present there is
no _further prosecution of any_.” _A Further Account of the Tryals_,
London, 1693, p. 10.
The court apparently met December 31st, and sat into January, which
would account for the apparent discrepancy in regard to the time of its
session.
[91] The authorities were accused of great partiality in allowing, in
several cases, persons accused by the afflicted to escape, when they
were either related to them or their personal friends. Brattle, pp. 69,
70.
[92] Calef, _More Wonders_, p. 144.
[93] Calef, p. 144. Hutchinson, ii. 61.
[94] Calef, pp. 55–64.
[95] Smith, _History of Delaware County_, 152, 153.
[96] _Documentary History of the State of New York_, iv. 85–88.
[97] Barber, _Historical Collections, Virginia_, 436–438.
[98] Hutchinson, ii. 62.
[99] Calef, p. 105. Brattle, _as above_, pp. 72, 78.
[100] Hutchinson, ii. 22.
[101] Brattle, _as above_, p. 75.
III.
SIR EDMUND ANDROS.
The casual reader of the usual American histories will receive from
them an impression that Sir Edmund Andros was a merciless tyrant,
whose administration was only redeemed from being utterly disastrous
by its imbecility. Even Doyle in his first volume of _The English
in America_ describes him as a wretched “placeman,” though in his
later volumes he somewhat modifies this unfavorable criticism and
describes him as respectable but stupid. Yet the fact remains, that
the authorities in England held him sufficiently in esteem to send him
to New York as lieutenant-governor under the Duke of York, and to New
England as governor and captain-general of the united Dominion, which
included New York and New Jersey as well as New England proper; and
after a complete revolution in politics in England Andros was the man
selected for the best position in the gift of the Board of Trade and
Plantations, the governorship of Virginia. A man who had served the
Stuarts well and faithfully, even incurring the odium which naturally
attached to the agents of their unpopular measures, must have exhibited
something more than dull stupidity, to recommend him to the officials
of the Revolution. The career of a public servant under so many
administrations must, at any rate, be of interest to all students of
American history.
It is the unfortunate fate of many excellent and useful officials,
that, in the performance of their duty to the state, they are obliged
to render themselves personally unpopular. It may freely be admitted
that the British crown was generally unfortunate in the selection
of its representatives in the American colonies; but, by a strange
injustice of history, many of the utterly bad ones have had their
faults forgotten or condoned, while one of the most able and efficient
of them all, in spite of the careful and scholarly works in which
his character has been vindicated, remains pilloried in the popular
histories of the American colonies as a tyrant and oppressor.
The caustic pens of the Mathers and the bitter spite of the early
New England historians have drawn for us an Andros whose haughty and
vindictive face rises before the mind whenever the name is mentioned.
Local patriotism in Connecticut has created a series of poetical myths
in regard to his administration, which tend to obscure the sober truth
of history. New York has more grateful memories of the governor who
secured and extended her dominion and by his wise and steady policy
protected her from her most dangerous foes. Virginia is less grateful
as yet, the unfortunate quarrel of Andros with the clergy sufficing
to obscure the many material benefits conferred on clergy and laity
alike by his wise administration. It is a curious fact, that both in
Virginia and in New England Andros failed to please the ecclesiastics,
different as they were; but, by those who are not prejudiced in favor
of spiritual domination, this will hardly be considered as a reproach.
The true reason of the hatred of Andros in New England, and of his
failure for so long to obtain justice in New York, was that he was
the agent appointed to carry out the plan of uniting the scattered
and discordant colonies into one strong Dominion. The separatist
spirit of those who preferred their petty local privileges to the
benefits of the union, that spirit which has been so dangerous to the
country throughout the whole course of its history, was at that time
successful, owing to the entirely disconnected circumstance that the
consolidation was urged by the ministers of a king who was misgoverning
his people in England. In carrying out these measures, the letter of
the law seemed to the colonists to be strained to the utmost as against
what they considered their popular rights, and the fate of corporations
in England alarmed the similar chartered bodies in America. James II.,
by his foolish and wicked projects in England, discredited his really
statesmanlike object in America; the union, so desirable in itself, was
discredited by the methods used to effect it, and the narrow theory of
colonial integrity and independence survived to plague the descendants
of the men who maintained it. It is important always to discriminate
between the object sought and the means used to effect it. Had the
consolidation been successful, James would be looked back upon as a
public benefactor, and the motto from Claudian upon the seal of the
Dominion, “_Nunquam libertas gratior exstat_” which reads like a
mockery, would have been as dear to a united people as the “_E pluribus
unum_” which they afterwards adopted.
New England historians have always found it difficult to admit that
there could be any good in a man who adhered to the fortunes of the
Stuarts, or who worshipped in the church over which Laud had been
primate. But the time that has elapsed since the period of struggle
should have mitigated, if not utterly extinguished, the ancestral
hostility of Puritan and Prelatist. Men are learning (under the
influence of commemorative festivities) to revise their opinions in
regard to the harshness and unloveliness of the Fathers of New England;
and it is to be hoped that, before long, justice may be done to the
honesty of conviction and conscientiousness of purpose that inspired
those who have been so long described as “malignants.” Is it too much
to hope that men will be able to see that the Englishmen who charged
with Rupert, and the Englishmen who prayed and smote with Oliver, were
both contending for a principle which was dearer to them than life--the
principle of stern resistance to the violation of constitutional law?
If we honor the men who hated the arbitrary government of the Stuarts,
it is unfair to condemn those who hated the far more arbitrary
government of the Rump and the Protector.
Edmund Andros was born in London, December 6, 1637, of a family that
was eminent among the adherents of Charles I.[102] His father, Amias
Andros, was the head of the family; he possessed an estate upon the
island of Guernsey, and was royal bailiff of that island. His mother
was Elizabeth Stone, whose brother, Sir Robert Stone, was cup-bearer
to the unfortunate Elizabeth the dispossessed Queen of Bohemia and
Electress Palatine, and was also captain of a troop of horse in Holland.
At the time of Edmund’s birth, his father was marshal of ceremonies to
the king;[103] and the boy was brought up in the royal household, very
possibly on terms of intimacy with the young princes whom he afterwards
served, who were only slightly his seniors. For a time he is said to
have been a page at court; but if this be true, it must have been when
he was extremely young, as court life ceased to have charms, if not
absolutely to exist, after the civil war broke out in 1642, and at this
time the boy was but five years old.
Faithful to the fortunes of his masters in discouragement and defeat,
we find the lad in Guernsey with his father, defending Castle Cornet
manfully against the Parliament, and, after its surrender, receiving
his first lessons in the field in Holland under Prince Henry of Nassau.
(It is a curious fact, trifling in appearance, but possibly not without
significance, that during the last year of the Commonwealth, and at
the time of the restoration, Increase Mather was chaplain of some of
the troops in Guernsey, and may have, even at that early date, formed
the bitter prejudice that is so evident in his later actions.)[104]
The services of the Andros family were so conspicuous in this period
of trial and discouragement, that Edmund with his father and his
uncle were specially exempted by name from a general pardon that was
issued to the people of Guernsey by Charles II. on his restoration,
on the ground that they “have, to their great honor, during the
late rebellion, continued inviolably faithful to his majesty, and
consequently have no need to be included in this general pardon.”[105]
The young soldier, who found himself restored to home and safety at
the age of twenty-three, had passed a stormy youth; his natural boyish
loyalty had been strengthened by what he had suffered on account of it.
He had seen those whom he most respected and revered dethroned and
exiled, living as pensioners on the grudging bounty of inhospitable
princes. He had seen the legal government of England subverted by
force of arms by men whose professions of their respect for law were
never louder than when they were overthrowing it, and had seen England
ground down under the harsh rule of a military despotism. He had seen
the orderly and regular services of the Church of England proscribed,
its ministers turned out of their parishes to make room, not only for
severe Presbyterians and iconoclastic Independents, but for ranting
sectaries who made the name of religion a by-word and a mockery. It
cannot be wondered that the young cavalier grew up deeply impressed
with the horrors of rebellion and usurped authority, and with the
conviction that much might be sacrificed for the sake of lawful and
regular government, or that, being as he was a member of the church
that had been proscribed and persecuted during the reign of the
self-styled “godly,” he should have been rendered all the warmer in his
attachment to her orderly and decent rights and ceremonies, as by law
established.
It should be remembered that the severity shown to the Dissenters at
the Restoration came largely from their close association with the
civil war and the government of the Commonwealth. The cloak of religion
had been made to cover the overthrow of the liberties of Parliament,
the killing of the king, and the rule of Cromwell; and it is not
unnatural, though most regrettable, that the victorious cavaliers
should have failed to make the proper distinction between dissent and
rebellion.
A knowledge of these early conditions of the life of Andros
is necessary for a comprehension of his character. They show
the influences which tended to form in him his most notable
characteristics: loyalty to his sovereign, a passion for regularity and
legal methods in the management of affairs, and a zeal for the Church
of England. The promotion of the young soldier followed quickly, as he
continued to display the fidelity and capacity of which his boyhood had
given promise. His uncle’s position in the household of the Queen of
Bohemia determined the direction of his promotion, and the nephew was
made gentleman-in-ordinary in the same household in 1660, a position
more honorable than remunerative, which was soon terminated by her
death in 1662. His military training was developed by the war with
the Dutch, in which he won further distinction and made his first
acquaintance with America and American affairs.[106] The position he
had held in the court of the exiled queen won him a wife in 1671, in
the person of a young kinswoman of the Earl of Craven, who had been
the devoted servant, if not the husband, of Elizabeth.[107] This Lord
Craven was the one officer of the army who remained faithful to James
II. to the last, and, though eighty years old, put himself at the head
of his regiment of body-guards to defend the king from insult, when
William of Orange was already in London.
The court positions held by Andros in the reign of Charles II. are
not those of a brilliant young cavalier, or a roystering blade of the
Restoration who only cared for place and plunder, wine and women; they
indicate rather that passionate devotion to the house of Stuart, which
the most worthless of that line were always able to inspire, devotion
generally recompensed by gross ingratitude. His marriage was evidently,
from the prominence Andros himself gives to it, a high connection for
a simple country gentleman to make, but it did not have the effect of
detaching him from a soldier’s life; for in the same year he appears
still as major of the regiment that had been in Barbadoes, and even
at that time he had obtained the reputation of being well versed in
American affairs.[108]
When this regiment was disbanded, Major Andros received a new
commission in a dragoon regiment that was raised at that time for
Prince Rupert, in which his four companies were incorporated, the first
English regiment ever armed with a bayonet.[109] This was the period
when the proprietors of Carolina were drawing up their remarkable
feudal constitution and dividing up lands and titles among themselves.
Lord Craven, who was one of the proprietors, seeing the interest that
Andros took in American affairs, procured him a patent conferring upon
him the title and dignity of a margrave, together with four baronies
containing some forty-eight thousand acres, to support the title. This
gift, however, was only valuable as a token of his friend’s esteem.
At his father’s death in 1674, he succeeded him in his seigniory of
Sausmarez and in the office of bailiff of Guernsey.[110] He was not,
however, fated to dwell in quiet and cultivate his father’s acres; for
at the end of the second Dutch war, when his regiment was mustered out
of service, he was selected, probably on account of his familiarity
with colonial affairs, to receive the surrender of New York and its
dependencies, in accordance with the treaty of peace. The territory
thus recovered had been granted by Charles II., at the time of its
first seizure in 1664, to his brother, the Duke of York; and Andros,
who must have been personally known to them both, was now appointed
lieutenant-governor of the palatine province. His commission bears
date of July 1, 1674.[111] He was well fitted for the position. His
residence in Holland had made him familiar with the people with whom he
was chiefly to deal, and his acquaintance with American affairs stood
him in good stead in matters of general policy, as his administration
soon disclosed; while his connection with the court and with the royal
family enabled him to act as a confidential agent of the Duke. He
arrived in New York in November accompanied by his wife, and after some
formalities entered upon his government. His treatment of the conquered
Dutch was marked with great tact and judgment, and rarely has the
transfer of a colony of one nation to the rule of another been effected
with so little friction or disturbance.[112]
In regard to the serious problem of the treatment of the Indians he
was far-sighted enough to continue the wise and judicious policy of
his predecessors in regard to the powerful and dangerous confederation
of the Iroquois or Five Nations. The importance of this can hardly
be over-estimated in its bearing upon the subsequent history of the
country. It is true that this policy was not original with him; he took
it as a legacy from the Dutch in 1674, as Nicolls had done ten years
before; but it may be said that the honest and judicious administration
of Indian affairs did much to save the English colonies from being
wiped out of existence by a general Indian war.[113] If the Iroquois
had been roused to go on the war-path, as were the unfortunate Indians
of New England, it is hard to see what could have saved the scattered
settlements. And again, if Andros, by a tortuous and deceitful policy
like that of the United Colonies towards the New England Indians, had
thrown the Iroquois into the arms of the French, who were only too
anxious for reconciliation with them, there is little probability that
the valor of Wolfe would ever have had a chance for success on the
Plains of Abraham.
As a provincial governor Andros made many enemies; but they were
mainly in the colonies lying adjacent to his own. The patent of New
York was very extensive, and covered territory which the neighboring
colonies claimed had been already ceded to them.[114] Connecticut had
vague claims all the way to the South Sea, and had been devoting its
energies during the short space of its history to edging along its
frontier further and further to the westward, in spite of the indignant
protests of the Dutch. Settlements had been formed on Long Island,
which was undoubtedly beyond its limits. Now, the dispute was between
rival colonies of the same country; and considering the uncertainty
of the title of Connecticut, Andros must be allowed to have acted
with propriety and moderation. He succeeded in making good the title
of the Duke to Long Island and Fisher’s Island, where the Connecticut
authorities were attempting to exercise jurisdiction; but the boundary
line upon the mainland remained an unsettled question even down to our
own times. At Saybrook, Andros did his duty in asserting formally his
principal’s claim, but was wise enough not to press a question which
would have caused great difficulties between the Colonies.[115]
With the New Jersey settlers he had still more difficulty, as they had
various grants and patents from the Duke himself to plead for their
justification; but he pursued a straightforward course, standing up, as
he was bound to do, for the rights of his principal, unless they could
be legally shown to have been granted away. His passion for regular and
orderly business methods soon manifested itself, and his letters reveal
the indignation of a man of affairs at the utterly unbusiness-like ways
of the people with whom he had to do.[116]
Besides his commission as Governor of New York, he had undoubtedly
private instructions as to how he should comport himself towards his
uneasy neighbors, the New England colonies. He was anxious to keep
on good terms with Connecticut, as New York was largely dependent
upon that colony for provisions; and his letters to the Connecticut
authorities are mostly of a friendly character, though written in a
tone of superiority which undoubtedly gave serious offence. On hearing
that the people of Hartford were harboring one of the regicides,
he addressed a very sharp letter to the colonial authorities, to
which they replied in a tone of injured innocence, which is quite
edifying, asking him for the names of those who had so maligned their
loyalty.[117]
It was impossible for the Connecticut Republicans to realize the
profound horror which the execution of Charles had caused, and the
depth of the feeling of hatred and repugnance which the perpetrators of
that audacious act had inspired. Even after William and Mary were on
the throne, and James II. was an exile, it was found that a regicide,
of the character and position of Ludlow, dared not show himself in
England; and during the Restoration period the feeling was intense. The
act was regarded by the majority of Englishmen as sacrilege, as well
as murder, for it had destroyed not only what was called the sacred
majesty of the king, but the sacred majesty of the legal government.
To Andros the news that Goffe and Whalley were escaping justice by the
connivance of the authorities was horrible, and must have suggested
doubts, if he had not found them already, of the policy of allowing men
who would have been excluded from all office in England to rule the
king’s colonies in America.
A more serious difficulty arose with Massachusetts, whose authorities
had ventured to send commissioners to the Mohawks to treat directly
with them as an independent nation--an act at utter variance with the
policy of the Dutch and English, who regarded them as under their
authority, and which, therefore, was liable to plunge the colony in
war.[118] The ostentatious assumption of independence by the colony
of Massachusetts, its claim to be free from the laws of England, and
the spirit displayed by many of its leaders, which must have seemed
seditious to the legal mind of Andros, made it necessary for him
to watch very carefully any affairs in which they were concerned.
His attitude brought upon him the hostility of the colony, and its
authorities asserted, and constantly reiterated, the charge that it
was at Albany, by his connivance, that Philip’s Indians had procured
supplies of arms.[119]
This charge, naturally, was most offensive to the loyal spirit of
Andros, who had fretted a good deal under his forced inactivity in the
war; and he repeatedly denied it, challenging his accusers for proof of
their assertions, proof which they were absolutely unable to supply.
They continued, however, to insinuate this malicious statement, and it
was long believed by the people of Massachusetts, and led undoubtedly
to much of the hostility between them and Andros during his subsequent
rule in New England.[120] In spite of their aspersions, he continued
steadily in his prudent policy, keeping the Mohawks quiet on one side,
and, by vigorous measures against the Indians in Maine, protecting
his personal enemies from inroads upon the other.[121] His government
of New York was successful; the country remained in peace; its quiet
contrasted strongly with the troubles in New England, and the revenues
of the colony were honestly collected and wisely administered. To
those who hold the commonly received opinion of Andros, it will seem
strange to find that he urged upon the Duke of York the desirability
of allowing the colonists the privileges of a representative
assembly.[122] In November 1677, he returned to England on a leave of
absence, remaining there until May of the following year.
While in England he received the honor of knighthood, a sign that
his labors were appreciated, and gave, in the form of answers to the
inquiries of the Committee for Trade and Plantations, statements in
regard to American affairs which are of great value as exhibiting the
condition of the colonies, and especially of New York, at that time.
His replies about New England are such as we might expect from a man of
his character and position, and disclose no hostility.
He says: “The acts of trade and navigacon are sayed, & is generally
beleeved, not to be observed in ye Collonyes as they ought”--a
statement which is certainly moderate if not grammatical; and also: “I
doe not find but the generality of the Magistrates and people are well
affected to ye king and kingdome, but most, knowing noe governmt then
their owne, think it best, and are wedded and oppiniate for it. And ye
magistrates & others in place, chosen by the people, think that they
are oblidged to assert & maintain sd Government all they cann, and are
Church members, and like so to be, chosen, and to continue without any
considerable alteracon and change there, and depend upon the people
to justifie them in their actings.” For a description of a puritan
republic by a royalist and churchman, this is remarkably fair and
correct.[123]
The last two years of his government in New York were vexed with
difficulties with some of the English merchants of the province, who
were probably pinched by Andros’s strict and methodical, and possibly
also narrow and literal, administration of the revenue laws. He was
openly accused by them, and by other discontented parties, to the
Duke of York as dishonest in his management of the revenue, and was
summoned home to answer to the charges. A special commissioner, who
was absurdly incompetent for the position, was sent to investigate the
accounts, and he took the side of the merchants in his report.[124]
Andros, however, was able to answer satisfactorily every charge against
him, and boldly demanded a thorough examination of all his acts as
governor. He was examined before Churchill and Jeffreys, neither of
whom would have been likely at that time to have let any one go free
who had defrauded the Duke, and they reported that Andros “had not
misbehaved himself, or broken the trust reposed in him by his royal
highness in the administration of his government, nor doth it appear
that he hath anyway defrauded or mismanaged his revenue.”[125]
Though completely exonerated, he was not at this time reinstated in
the governorship, and the next five years of his life were passed
in England at court, where he obtained an honorable position in the
household, and in his estates in Guernsey, to which in 1684 the
island of Alderney was added by royal grant at a rent of thirteen
shillings.[126] In 1685 he received a military command once more, and
served in the campaign in the west of England against Monmouth; and
the silence of the enemies in regard to any acts of cruelty at this
time is a high tribute, for, if they had known of any, they would
undoubtedly have held him up for abhorrence as a persecutor.[127] Later
in the year he was made lieutenant-colonel of the Princess Anne of
Denmark’s regiment of horse, under the command of the Earl of Scarsdale.
The accession of James, under whom he had acted previously, made it
likely that Andros would again receive employment. In spite of the
fact that he was a devoted adherent of the Church of England, the
king, who was attempting to restore the Roman worship, gave him his
full confidence, and entrusted him with the work of carrying out a
project which had been for some time before the minds of the colonial
authorities in England--the consolidation of New England into a single
province. This was no new idea of James II., but had been discussed for
several years; and it was a plan that had much to recommend it.
As early as 1678, the Lords of Trade and Plantations had been brought
to see the need of a general governor and a fit judicature in the
colonies, for the determining of differences; and in 1681 Culpepper
had urged the project. A preliminary measure had been adopted of
appointing a general revenue officer for all the American colonies,
with the power of selecting his own subordinates.[128] The notorious
Randolph, a man of strict honesty and probity of life, but unable
to see more than his own side of any question, was appointed deputy
surveyor-general over the New England colonies, and devoted his
energies to obtaining the forfeiture of the patent of Massachusetts.
The astuteness and bribery of the Massachusetts agents were able to
defer the evil day until the autumn of 1684, when the charter was
vacated.[129] This left Massachusetts in the hands of the crown; the
next problem was to obtain the vacating of the more regular charters of
Connecticut and Rhode Island. Writs of _quo warranto_ were issued, and
sent to the colonies respectively; and the submission of Rhode Island,
after some decent protests, was obtained.[130]
Andros was chosen by the king for the important post of
governor-general, not, as Palfrey insinuates, because he was peculiarly
disagreeable to Massachusetts, and so likely to carry out the objects
of the king; but because the king knew him personally, and knew him
to be a man of capacity and integrity. It is absurd to suppose that
James, who was an experienced man of business himself, and more
familiar with colonial affairs than any king of England before or
since, would have intentionally selected a man for the purpose who
would endanger the success of the undertaking. Colonel Kirke, who
had been actually designated as governor, had been withdrawn as
disagreeable to New England. It is unnecessary here to enter into any
arguments to show the advantage that would have accrued to the colonies
if this judicious plan had been successful. New England might have been
spared much wasteful legislation and ruinous financial experiments,
and would have been joined together in one strong province, instead
of being composed of several weak and jealous colonies; the union,
the benefits of which it took the colonists so long to learn, would
have been facilitated; and a strong and united front would have been
presented to the French, who were beginning now to threaten the
existence of the English colonies. The Stuarts, it is true, were
pensioners and allies of the King of France in Europe, but in America
they were his natural and inevitable enemies; and James, who, unlike
his brother, felt deeply the shame of his vassalage to the French, was
anxious to prevent any extension of French power in America.
Andros arrived in Boston in December 1686, and was received in a
most loyal and even enthusiastic manner.[131] A large portion of the
Massachusetts people had grown weary of the rule of the oligarchy, and
Andros was welcomed as bringing with him the protection of English law.
His government had been constituted in detail in his commission, and
he at once proceeded to organize it and to levy the taxes necessary
for its support. Deprived of the representative assembly in which the
semblance of free government had been preserved, one of the towns
attempted to resist the tax. The leaders of the movement were tried
fairly and legally, and were fined and imprisoned for their attempt at
resistance.[132] After this no attempts were made to dispute the laws
of the new government, until the revolution which overthrew all legal
authority in the colony broke out in 1689.
It was very important for Andros that the submission of Connecticut
should be obtained without conflict, as Massachusetts, like New
York, was largely dependent upon the neighboring colony for food.
The Connecticut authorities fenced and parried, interposed delays,
and showed themselves, as they always did, clever men of business,
exhibiting qualities that doubtless raised Governor Treat and Secretary
Allyn in Governor Andros’s estimation. Finally, however, when further
resistance was dangerous, a letter was sent which could be construed
either as a surrender or as not a surrender, so that they might have
a safe retreat in any case; and on the strength of this letter Andros
assumed the government.[133] The period that follows is sometimes
described as the “usurpation,” but there is nothing in the history of
the times to give one the impression that the government of Andros
in Connecticut was not as regular and legal a government as the
colony ever had. If Andros had not been overthrown in Massachusetts
by a carefully-prepared rebellion, which left the colonies without a
governor, it is not likely that either Connecticut or Rhode Island
would have ventured to resume its charter. Andros came to Connecticut
in October 1687, travelling by way of Providence and New London, and
from New London across country through what are now Salem, Colchester,
and Glastonbury, to the Rocky Hill ferry. He was attended by a “company
of gentlemen and grenadiers to the number of sixty or upwards,” and was
met at the ferry by a troop of horse “which conducted him honorably
from the ferry through Waterfield (Wethersfield) up to Hartford.”[134]
Of the transactions at Hartford we have the dramatic story of local
tradition, the only proof of which was the existence of an oak tree
said to have been the receptacle of the charter. For this romantic
story there is absolutely no contemporary authority, and the details
are very improbable. The charter very possibly may have been concealed,
and very possibly in the Charter Oak, but the incidents of the familiar
story are, if known, not mentioned by any writers of the time.[135] The
records of the colony contain simply the formal but expressive entry:
“His Excellency, S^r Edmund Andross, Kn^t., Capt. General & Gov^r of
his Ma^{ties} Territorie and Dominion in New England, by order from his
Ma^{tie} James the second, King of England, Scotland, France & Ireland,
the 31 of October, 1687, took into his hands the government of this
colony of Conecticott, it being by his Ma^{tie} annexed to Massachusets
& other colonys under his Excelencies Goverment. FINIS.”[136]
Bulkeley, in the “_Will and Doom_,” relates that Andros was met at
Hartford by the trained bands of divers towns who united to pay him
their respects.
“Being arrived at Hartford,” he continues, “he is greeted and
caressed by the Gov^r and assistants, and some say, though I will
not confidently assert it, that the Gov^r and one of his assistants
did declare to him the vote of the Gen^l Court for their submission
to him. However, after some treaty between his Excellency and them
that evening, he was, the next morning, waited on and conducted
by the Gov^r, Deputy Gov^r, Assistants and Deputies, to the Court
Chamber, and by the Gov^r himself directed to the Gov^{r’s}
seat, and being there seated (the late Gov^r, Assistants and
Deputys being present & the Chamber thronged as full of people
as it was capable of), His Excellency declared that his Majesty
had, _according to their desire_, given him a commission to come
and take on him the government of Connecticut, and caused his
commission to be publicly read. That being done, his Excellency
showed that it was his Majesty’s pleasure to make the late Gov^r
and Captain John Allyn members of his council, and called upon them
to take their oaths, which they did forthwith, and all this in that
public and great assembly, _nemine contradicente_, and only one man
said that they first desired that they might continue as they were.”
“After this his Excellency proceeded to erect courts of Judicature,
and constituted the said John Allyn, Esq. & Judge of the inferiour
Court of Common Pleas for the county of Hartford, and all others
who before had been assistants, & dwelling in the same County, he
now made Justices of the Peace for the said County.
“From hence his Excellency passed through all the rest of the
countys of N. Haven, N. London and Fairfield, settling the
Government, was everywhere chearfully and gratefully received,
and erected the King’s Courts as aforesaid, wherein those who
were before in the office of Gov^r, Deputy Gov^r and Assistants
were made Judges of the Pleas, or Justices of the Peace, not
one excepted nor (finally) excepting, but accepting the same,
some few others being by his Excellency added to them in the
several Countys, not without, but by & with their own advice and
approbation, and all sworn by the oaths (of allegience and) of
their respective offices, to do equal justice to rich and poor,
after the Laws & Customs of the Realm of England, and of this his
Majesty’s dominion.”
“The Secretary, who was well acquainted with all the transactions
of the General Court, and very well understood their meaning and
intent in all, delivered their common seal to Sir E. A.”[137]
Connecticut under Andros passed a period of peace and quiet. Governor
Treat and secretary Allyn were made members of the council and judges,
besides being entrusted with military commands, and everything went
on quietly. There was an evident disposition to favor Connecticut,
and every reason why it should be favored. We hear of no complaint
against the government or the laws. The worst hardship recorded is
the settling of intestate property according to English law, instead
of the customs of the colony. It is true that town meetings were
forbidden except once a year, but there were frequent sessions of the
courts held, so that the citizens were not deprived of all the common
interests of their lives. With Allyn the governor was on most friendly
terms, modifying several regulations at his suggestions, and entrusting
him largely with the management of Connecticut affairs.[138] To make a
proper catalogue of miseries, the Connecticut historian, Trumbull, is
obliged to borrow and relate doleful stories from Massachusetts, not
asserting that they happened in Connecticut, but certainly producing
that impression.[139]
There were many reasons why Connecticut did not resent the government
of Andros as much as was the case in Massachusetts. In the first place,
Connecticut had had a lawful government and a law-abiding people; its
charter had not been taken away as a punishment, but as a political
necessity; while Massachusetts had been fighting for a system of more
than questionable legality, and in a spirit which might well seem to
the royal officials to be seditious. Connecticut had enjoyed a form of
government in which the people had really controlled public affairs;
in Massachusetts the government had been in the hands of an oligarchy,
who resented most bitterly their deposition from power as robbing
them of their peculiar privileges. In Connecticut the ecclesiastical
system at this time was judicious and moderate; the radical tendencies
of the New Haven colony had been held in check by the wiser policy
of Hartford. Persecution had never been a feature of Connecticut
religion, and its history is not disgraced with the accounts of
frequent religious quarrels, excommunications, and expulsions which
are so familiar to that of the neighboring colony. In Massachusetts
Andros found himself opposed and thwarted in every way that the angry
leaders could devise; in Connecticut, though men were attached to
their self-government and resented its loss, he was received with
respect and consideration. One is led to suspect that, with all their
pride in their charter and love of their liberties, the leading men
of Connecticut were shrewd enough to see the advantages that they
received from the new arrangement. They saw the arrogance of their old
rivals of the “Bay Colony” humiliated; they had the pleasure of seeing
Hampshire county compelled to come to Hartford to court, and they
felt themselves favored and trusted by the governor. Besides all these
considerations, from the situation of Connecticut, lying as it did
between Massachusetts and New York, it was much to Andros’s interest
that he should keep the colony well disposed, and he took some trouble
to do so.
And, after all, what do the charges of tyranny and misgovernment amount
to, even in Massachusetts? The real _gravamen_ of all the charges is,
that the charter had been taken away, and the people of Massachusetts
did not enjoy those laws of England which they had always claimed as
their birthright. The personal charges against Andros were so frivolous
that the colonial agents did not dare to put their hands to them when
the case was brought to trial in England, and, by their failure to
appear, confessed that they were false and malicious. It is not likely
that Andros was always conciliatory. That a population of dissenting
Whigs should put difficulties in the way of public service of the
Church of England, as by law established, must have been to Andros
unendurable, and it is absurd to represent his use of a meeting-house
in Boston for the religious services of the national church as an
instance of malignant despotism.[140] It is far from improbable that
Andros was compelled against his will to be as civil as he was to the
American non-conformists, because his master was trafficking with
them in England. While Increase Mather was intriguing with the king
and receiving friendly messages from Father Petre, and while men like
Alsop and Rosewell and Penn were basking in the favors of the court at
Whitehall, a governor of New England, even if he had wished, could not
venture upon any acts of oppression in America.[141] In fact, Andros’s
actions in insisting on the services of the English Church in Boston
may be considered among the most creditable in his history, and exhibit
the character of the man. He risked offending the king, and did offend
the puritans, in order to show respect to that historic church of his
nation, which king and puritan alike desired to overthrow.
It is quite probable that Andros was at times rough in his language.
Without justifying him in this, it may be pleaded that it certainly
was not an uncommon fault of military men; and besides, there were
a good many things that must have made the use of strong language a
relief. He did not have a very high appreciation of Indian deeds; but
few honest men to-day, legal or lay, would differ from him. He reviled
the palladium of New England liberties, the towns; but perhaps in
this he was in advance of his age. He reorganized the court system,
established tables of fees, and changed the method of proving wills;
but here the blame is not his; but if any one’s, it should lie upon
the king who established the province, or the council who passed the
laws. The truth seems to be that Andros was shocked and scandalized at
the loose, happy-go-lucky way of doing business that had, up to this
time, served the colonies; and he labored in New England, as he had in
New York, and as he afterwards did in Virginia, to give his province
a good, efficient, general system of administration. What made it
objectionable to the colonies was not that it was bad, but that it was
different from what they had had. The man who does his arithmetic upon
his fingers would count it a hardship if he were compelled to use the
much more convenient processes known to better educated men. The case
was the same in New England. They did not want to be improved; they had
no desire for any more efficient or regular administration than they
were accustomed to. They preferred managing their own affairs badly to
having them done for them, were it ever so well. It is not difficult
for us to appreciate their discontent.
It is harder for us to put ourselves in Andros’s place, and to feel
with him the disgust of an experienced and orderly administrator at
the loose and slipshod methods that he saw everywhere; the indignation
of the loyal servant of the king at hardly concealed disloyalty and
sedition; the resentment of a devoted member of the national Church
of England at the insults heaped upon it by the men who had failed in
their previous attempt to destroy it.
Andros failed to conciliate Massachusetts. An angel from heaven bearing
King James’s commission would have failed. A rebellion against his
power was carefully prepared, doubtless in concert with the Whig
leaders in England; and when the news of the English Revolution came,
Massachusetts broke out also, arrested the governor, destroyed the
government, and set up an irregular government of its own.[142] The
object of this revolution was evidently to overthrow the Dominion of
New England, and to resume separate colonial independence before the
new English authorities had time to communicate with Andros. There is
no reason to think that Andros would have tried to hold the country
for James. Respect for the law was, with him, the reason for his
loyalty to the crown; and though he was personally attached to the
Stuarts and had acted under James for many years, he was governor of
the Dominion, not for James Stuart, but for the king of England.
The popular leaders were indeed afraid, not that Andros would
oppose the revolution in England, but that he would accept it, and
be confirmed by William and Mary in the same position he had held
under James, and that thus the hated union of the colonies would be
perpetuated. Their revolution was only too successful. They had their
own way, and the events in Salem in 1692 were a commentary on the
benefits of colonial autonomy.
In Rhode Island and Connecticut the old charters were reassumed. In
Connecticut, as there had been little break when Andros came, so now
there was little trouble when he departed. Secretary Allyn had managed
the affairs of the colony before the “usurpation”; Secretary Allyn had
been the chief intermediary between Andros and the people; Secretary
Allyn continued to manage Connecticut affairs after Andros had gone.
The particularists succeeded in getting possession of the government,
in spite of the opposition of a strong minority, and Connecticut,
like Massachusetts, returned to her insignificant but precious
independence.[143]
Andros succeeded in escaping once, but was arrested in Rhode Island,
and returned by the magistrates there to the revolutionary leaders in
Boston. By these he was kept in prison for nearly a year, and then sent
to England, where, as has been said, no one appeared against him.[144]
Hutchinson complains that the Massachusetts agents were misled by their
counsel, Sir John Somers. When one considers that Somers was one of the
greatest lawyers the bar of England has ever known, one is inclined
to believe that he knew his clients’ case was too bad to take into
court.[145]
The government of William and Mary found nothing to condemn in Andros’s
conduct, and showed their appreciation of his services by sending him
out, in 1692, as governor of Virginia, adjoining to the office at the
same time the governorship of Maryland.[146]
He exhibited here the same qualities that had characterized his
government in New York and New England; intelligent aptitude for
business, love of regularity and order, zeal for honest administration,
and consequently some degree of severity upon offenders against the
navigation laws who were often men of good birth and position, and
last, though not least, a great dislike of the interference of meddling
ecclesiastics with matters of state. He reduced the records of the
province to order, finding that they had been seriously neglected;
and when the State House was burned, he provided a building for them,
and had them again carefully sorted and registered. He encouraged
the introduction of manufactures and the planting of cotton, and
established a legal size for the tobacco cask, an act which protected
the merchants from arbitrary plundering by custom house officials in
England, but which was used by his enemies to form the basis of an
accusation of defrauding the revenue. He was on the best of terms with
the prominent men of the Dominion, and he left behind him a pleasant
memory in Virginia among the laity, and among those of the clergy who
were not under the influence of Commissary Blair. The quarrel with
Blair was an unfortunate one, for, though meddlesome and dogmatic, he
was working for the higher interests of the colony; but the evidence
he himself supplies of the temper of his proceedings explains Sir
Edmund’s antipathy.
He was recalled to England in 1698, and was worsted in his contest
with Blair, having been unfortunate enough to bring upon himself
the resentment of the Bishop of London. The record of the trial is
preserved at Lambeth, and has been printed in this country, and a
perusal of it will convince most readers that Sir Edmund received very
hard usage, and might have complained, in the words of the lawyer who
was defeated in a contest with Laud, that he had been “choked by a pair
of lawn-sleeves.”[147]
The rest of his life was passed at home. The government still
showed their confidence in him by appointing him the Governor of
Guernsey.[148] He lived quietly, passing a peaceful old age, and died
in February, 1714 at the age of seventy-six. His continued interest
in the welfare of the colonies, in the service of which he had passed
so many years, is evidenced by the fact that his name appears among the
members of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign
Parts.[149]
Removed from the prejudices of his own day and generation, and regarded
in the impartial light of history, Sir Edmund Andros appears not as
the cruel persecutor that he seemed to the Mathers and the Sewalls,
nor as the envious Sanballat that Blair’s fervent Scotch imagination
pictured him, but as a single-hearted, loyal English gentleman, of the
best type of those cavaliers, devoted to church and king, who, in their
horror at the results of puritanism and liberalism in England, were
willing to sacrifice if necessary some degree of personal liberty in
order to secure the dominion of law.[150]
Judging from what we know of him, we should have looked to see him, had
he been in England instead of in America at the time of the Revolution,
by the side of many fellow Tories maintaining the liberties and the
religion of his country. In America, far from the scene of conflict,
his duty was to support the government of the king; but the claim of
the colonists that, by arresting him, they prevented him from “making
an Ireland of America,” is disproved by his immediate and loyal
acceptance of the results of the Revolution, and by the confidence the
new government immediately reposed in him.[151]
The French authorities in Canada, who were in a position to judge his
character correctly, have left on record their opinion that it was
hopeless to expect assistance from him against his countrymen in the
struggle between the two nations that broke out after the abdication of
James II. The Chevalier de Callières, Governor of Montreal, wrote to
the Marquis de Seignelay as follows:
“Chevalier Andros, now Governor-General of New England and New
York, having already declared in his letter to M. de Denonville
that he took all the Iroquois under his protection as subjects of
the crown of England, and having prevented them returning to M.
de Denonville to make peace with us, there is no longer reason to
hope for its conclusion through the English, nor for the alienation
of the Iroquois from the close union which exist with those (the
English), in consequence of the great advantage they derive from
thence, the like to which we cannot offer for divers reasons.
“Chevalier Andros is a Protestant as well as the whole English
colony, so that there is no reason to hope that he will remain
faithful to the King of England (James II.), and we must expect
that he will not only urge the Iroquois to continue the war against
us, but that he will also add Englishmen to them to lead them and
seize the posts of Niagara, Michillimackinac and others proper to
render him master of all the Indians, our allies, according to the
project they have long since formed, and which they were beginning
to execute when we declared war against the Iroquois, and when we
captured seventy Englishmen who were going to take possession of
Michillimackinac, one of the most important posts of Canada.”[151]
It is gratifying to notice that at last his character and services
are beginning to be better appreciated in the provinces over which he
ruled; and we may hope that in time the Andros of partisan history will
give place, even in the popular narratives of colonial affairs, to the
Andros that really existed, stern and proud and uncompromising, it is
true, but honest, upright, and just; a loyal servant of the crown, and
a friend to the best interests of the people whom he governed.
NOTES.
[102] The principal authority for the facts of Andros’s life before
he became governor of the Duke of York’s province is a biographical
sketch in the _History of Guernsey_, by Jonathan Duncan, Esq., London,
1841, written by the late Mr. Thomas Andros of Guernsey, who died in
1853. This sketch was copied in _N. Y. Colonial Documents_, ii. 740,
and has been used by W. H. Whitmore in his memoir of Sir Edmund Andros,
in the first volume of _The Andros Tracts_. Mr. Whitmore has added to
the sketch some few additional facts collected from a pedigree at the
Heralds’ Office and from private family papers. His memoir is the most
convenient, as it is the fullest and most accurate, life of Andros that
has appeared. The _History of Guernsey_, by Ferdinand Brock Tupper,
contains a few additional facts in regard to him, but of trifling
importance. _Vide_ pp. 367, 377, 392. See also _Chronicles of Castle
Cornet_ by the same author.
[103] Duncan, _History of Guernsey_, p. 89.
[104] _Memoir of the Life of the late Reverend Increase Mather, D. D._,
London, 1725, pp. 10–12.
[105] Whitmore, _Andros Tracts_, I. ix. Duncan, p. 106.
[106] Pedigree, in _Andros Tracts_, I. vi. Duncan, p. 588. From
_Calendar of State Papers, Am. and W. Indies_, we learn that Andros
saw service in the West Indies, being major in a regiment of foot,
commanded by Sir Tobias Bridge, which left England in March, 1667,
and arrived in Barbadoes in April. He returned to England in 1668, as
bearer of despatches and letters to the government, and was in England
in September of that year. Whether he returned to Barbadoes is not
evident, but he was in England in Jan., 1671, and throughout the year.
The regiment was disbanded and four companies sent to England, arriving
there Oct. 5, 1671, and were incorporated in the new dragoon regiment
being raised for Prince Rupert, to which Andros received his commission
Sept. 14, 1671. This chronology is irreconcilable with that given in
the pedigree or by Duncan.
[107] For relations of Lord Craven and Elizabeth, see Miss Benger’s
_Memoir of the Queen of Bohemia_.
[108] Duncan, p. 588. _Calendar of State Papers, America and the West
Indies_ (1661–1668), 1427, 1436, 1439, 1476, 1760, 1761, 1762, 1824,
1839, (1669–1674), 394, 545.
[109] Duncan, pp. 588–89. _America and W. Indies_ (1669–1674), 554,
559, 625, 639, 791. Mackinnon, _Origin and Services of the Coldstream
Guards_, i. 185.
[110] Tupper, _History of Guernsey_, 2d Ed., London, 1876. He
says (p. 392): “Edmund Andros had succeeded his father as bailiff
(_bailli_) in 1674, with power to nominate a lieutenant during his long
non-residence; he was also a colonel of dragoons, and after his return
from his successive North American governments, he was constituted
lieutenant-governor of Guernsey by Queen Anne, who dispensed with his
executing the office of bailiff and accepted Eleazar Le Marchant as
lieutenant-bailiff.” Apparently he had some trouble at first from the
governor of the island, Christopher, Lord Hatton, for we find (p. 377)
a royal order sustaining Andros, and forbidding Lord Hatton to disturb
him in the office of bailiff.
[111] _N. Y. Col. Doc._, iii. 215. The boundaries stated in this
Commission are as follows: “All that part of y^e Maine Land of New
England beginning at a certaine place called or knowne by y^e name of
St. Croix next adjoyneing to new Scotland in America and from thence
along y^e sea Coast unto a certaine place called Pemaquin or Pemaquid
and soe up the River thereof to y^e furthest head of the same, as it
tendeth northwards and extending from thence to the River Kinebequi
and soe upwards by y^e shortest course to y^e river Canada northwards.
And also all that Island or Islands comonly called or knowne by y^e
several names of Matowacks or Long Island scituate lying and being
towards y^e West of Cape Codd and y^e Narrow Higansetts abutting upon
y^e maine land betweene y^e two rivers there called or knowne by y^e
severall names of Conecticut and Hudsons River together also w^{th}
y^e said river called Hudsons River and all y^e land from y^e West
side of Conecticut River to y^e East side of Delaware Bay, and also
all those severall Islands called or knowne by y^e name of Martine
mynyards and Nantukes otherwise Nantukett, together with all the lands
islands soiles rivers harbours mines mineralls quarryes woods marshes
waters lakes fishings hawking hunting and fowling and all royaltyes and
profitts comôdityes and hereditaments to the said several islands lands
and premisses, belonging and apperteyning with their and every of their
appurtenancies.”
[112] For Andros’s own account of the first three years of his
administration, see _N. Y. Col. Doc._, iii. 254–257. For the surrender
of New York, _Documentary History of New York_, iii. 43; Andros’s
report on state of the province, i. 60.
[113] That this was recognized by men qualified to judge, _vide_ letter
from Lieutenant-Colonel Talcott to Andros, _Connecticut Colonial
Records_ (1678–89), p. 399; _vide_ also _Doc. Hist. N. Y._, i. 99;
_Conn. Col. Rec._ (1665–78), pp. 397, 404, 461, 492. For Andros’s own
official report of the assistance he rendered New England in Philips’s
war, see _N. Y. Col. Doc._, iii. 264, 265. For remarks upon the
contrasted Indian policies, see Brodhead, _Hist. New York_, ii. 281–290.
[114] _Conn. Col. Rec._ (1678–89), p. 283. _N. Y. Col. Doc._, iii. 236.
[115] _Conn. Col. Rec._ (1665–78), pp. 260, 334, 335, 339–43, 578–86.
_N. Y. Col. Doc._, iii. 254.
Governor Dongan’s jealousy of Andros makes his statement of Andros’s
intentions ten years before questionable authority, especially when
it is remembered that at the time he made the statement he was busily
engaged in trying to persuade the people of Connecticut to ask to be
annexed to New York, rather than to Massachusetts under Andros. Under
these circumstances, one cannot help suspecting his testimony as to
memoranda left behind by Andros, who was one of the most cautious and
methodical of men. _N. Y. Col. Doc._, iii. 415. If Andros intended to
surprise the post, he certainly was very ill-judged to send notice of
his claim beforehand. For the best account of these proceedings, see
Brodhead, _Hist. of N. Y._, ii. 284–286.
[116] Brodhead, _Hist. of New York_, ii. 303–306. _New Jersey
Archives_, i. 156–347.
[117] _Conn. Col. Records_ (1678–89), 283–285.
[118] _Mass. Rec._, iv. (2), 359–361. Brodhead, _History of New York_,
ii. 127.
[119] _N. Y. Col. Doc._, iii. 257 ff.
[120] _N. Y. Col. Doc._, iii. 254, 258, 259, 266, 267. See also
Randolph’s report in the same vol. 242. Hutchinson, _Coll._, 476, 490.
Brodhead, ii. 290. Mather’s _Brief History of the War_, 117, 129, 254.
[121] _N. Y. Col. Doc._, iii. 264, 265.
[122] _N. Y. Col. Doc._, iii. 235, 256.
[123] _N. Y. Col. Doc._, iii. 260–265.
[124] _N. Y. Col. Doc._, 279–284, 302–308. For Andros’s answer, 308–313.
[125] _N. Y. Col. Doc._, iii. 314–316.
[126] Duncan, 589. _N. Y. Col. Doc._, ii. 741. Hutchinson, _Coll._, 542.
[127] Whitmore, _Andros Tracts_, I. xlix., Note D. “In an old pedigree
written about A. D. 1687 by Charles Andros uncle of the governor, and
still preserved in the family, we find:
‘The 13th April 1683, the King, Charles II. gave the charge of Gentleman
in ordinary of his privy chamber’ to Sir Edmund, and ‘the 6th day of
the month of June 1685, the King, James II. gave a Commission to the
above Sir Edmund Andros to command a troop of Cavalry to go against the
rebels in England.’ This refers of course to Monmouth’s Rebellion. ‘In
August, 1685, he was made Lieut.-Colonel of Lord Scarsdale’s cavalry.’”
[128] Palfrey, _Hist. of New England_, iii. 319, 334. In 1678,
Andros had written Blathwayt that there would be danger of Indian
difficulties, “so long as each petty colony hath or assumes absolute
power of peace and war, which cannot be managed by such popular
governments as was evident in the late Indian wars in New England.”
_N. Y. Col. Doc._, iii. 271. Earlier still, Gov. Winslow of Plymouth
had told Randolph that New England could never flourish until its
several colonies were placed under his Majesty’s immediate government
(Hutchinson, _Coll._, p. 509), and Randolph had urged the matter upon
the council in his celebrated report. Hutch., _Coll._, 477–503.
[129] _Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll._, 4th Series, vol. ii.
[130] _Rhode Island Col. Records_, iii. 175–197. Chalmers, _Political
Annals_, 278.
[131] Whitmore, I. xxvii. _Cambridge Almanac_, 1687.
[132] Whitmore, I. xxvii. Goldwin Smith, in his recent work on _The
United States_, seems to suppose that this occurred in New Hampshire.
[133] _Conn. Col. Records_ (1678–89), 376–378.
[134] _Conn. Col. Records_ (1678–89), 389.
[135] Chalmers, _Political Annals_, 297, 298. _General History of
Connecticut_, by a Gentleman of the Province (Rev. S. Peters, D. D.),
London, 1781.
Peters’s account is as follows: “They resigned it (the charter) in
_propria forma_, into the hands of Sir Edmund Andros at Hertford, in
October, 1687, and were annexed to the Mass. Bay colony, in preference
to New York, according to royal promise and their own petition. But
the very night of the surrender of it, Samuel Wadsworth of Hertford,
with the assistance of a mob, violently broke into the apartments of
Sir Edmund, regained, carried off and hid the charter in the hollow of
an elm, and in 1689, news arriving of an insurrection and overthrow
of Andros at Boston, Robert Treat, who had been elected in 1687, was
declared by the mob still to be Governor of Connecticut. He daringly
summoned his old Assembly, who being convened, voted the charter to be
valid in law, and that it could not be vacated by any power, without
the consent of the General Assembly. They then voted, that Samuel
Wadsworth should bring forth the charter; which he did in a solemn
procession, attended by the High Sheriff, and delivered it to the
Governor. The General Assembly voted their thanks to Wadsworth, and
twenty shillings as a reward for stealing and hiding their charter in
an elm.”
[136] _Conn. Col. Rec._ (1678–89), 248.
[137] Bulkeley, Gershom, _Will and Doom_, in _Conn. Col. Rec._
(1678–89), 390, 391.
[138] _Conn. Col. Rec._ (1678–89), 393 _note_, 404 _note_.
[139] Trumbull, _History of Connecticut_, i. 371–375.
[140] For Andros’s own account of the transaction, see _N. Y. Col.
Doc._, iii. 722–726. _Andros Tracts_, iii. 20, 21. _R. I. Col. Rec._,
iii. 281.
[141] It is interesting to notice in this regard, that the chief
complaint Increase Mather made against Andros, in his interview
with James II., was that he did not sufficiently observe the king’s
Declaration of Indulgence. Mather, Cotton, D. D., _Life of Increase
Mather_, p. 41, London 1725. _Parentator_, pp. 109–116 (reprinted in
part in _Andros Tracts_, iii. 121–187). _Cf._ Randolph’s account in
_N. Y. Col. Doc._, iii. 578; also, Chalmers, _Pol. Annals_, 426.
[142] Whitmore. _Andros Tracts_, i. 1–10. Hutchinson, i. 374–377.
_N. Y. Col. Doc._, iii. 722, 726. Palfrey, _History of New England_,
iii. ch. xiv., xv. That the revolution was carefully prepared and
planned, see Mather, Samuel, _Life of Cotton Mather_, p. 42, and _N. Y.
Col. Doc._, iii. 587, 588 (Deposition of Philip French), New York, 1689.
“The above said Mr. Philip French further declared that being on board
the ‘Prudent Sarah,’ Benjamin Gillem Mast^r coming from England in
company with Sir Will^m Fips. heard him speak severall times the words
following to this effect, ‘that he did say the first fishing boat he
mett he would hire and goe privately ashore and rise a company without
beating of drum, and that he would take the packets sent to S^r Edmund
and not deliver them to him, except he appeared in Councill, and there
would secure him.’
“That about the same time upon the said voyage he heard S^r Will^m
Fips say that he appeared before the Lords, and one of them starting
up asked him whether they would stand by the rights of their Charter,
or for the abuses they had received from Sir Edmund Andros; it was
answered, by the right of their charter.
“And about the same time this Deponant heard him say, that they (which
this Deponant supposes were the Lords or the Cômons assembled in
Parliament) told him, that if they did give them trouble to hang Sir
Edmund, they deserved noe funds.”
[143] _Conn. Col. Rec._ (1678–89), 250, 455–460.
[144] _N. Y. Col. Doc._, iii. 723. Whitmore, _Andros Tracts_, iii. 22,
23, 41–43 (for his escape and capture, 95–102).
[145] Hutchinson, i. 394.
[146] Beverly, _History of Virginia_, i. 37. C. W. (Charles Wolley),
A. M., _A Two Years’ Journal in New York_. For an unfavorable account,
_Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc._, v. 124–166, “_An Account of the Present
State and Government of Virginia_.” The Sainsbury Papers, in the State
Library at Richmond, Va., are transcripts and abstracts from the London
originals, of all official papers of this period, relating to Virginia,
and an examination of them made in 1892, through the kindness of the
State Librarian, gave strong corroboration of the view of Andros’s
administration presented by Wolley and Beverly, and presented Blair
and his friends in a less amiable light than they have presented
themselves. _Cf._ Meade, _Old Churches and Families of Virginia_, i.
107, 108. Perry, _History of the American Episcopal Church_, vol. i.
chapter vii.
[147] Perry, _Historical Collections of the American Colonial Church:
Virginia_.
[148] Whitmore, I. xxxiv. Duncan, 130, 131, 589. “In 1704, under
Queen Anne, he was extraordinarily distinguished by having the
lieutenant-governorship of Guernsey bestowed on him, whilst he also
continued bailiff, his duties, as such, being dispensed with for the
time, he having power given to him to appoint his lieutenant-bailiff,
who was likewise authorized to name a deputy.”
[149] Whitmore, I. xxxv.
[150] Duncan, 589. “Sir Edmund was for many years at the head of a
mixed and adventurous population, in newly settled and important
colonies, distant from the mother country, a station at all time
arduous, but immeasurably so in the age of revolutions in which he
lived, when the institutions longest established were not exempt
from the common jeopardy, and unusual energy was called for in all,
wherever situated, by whom the royal authority was to be asserted. He
resolutely encountered the duties and responsibilities of his high
office throughout the long course of his career, and was successful
in resisting, in his military as well as in his civil capacity, the
intrigues and hostilities of the neighboring French and Indians, to
which he was continually exposed. By some of the chroniclers of the
period, who wrote, doubtless, not uninfluenced by its partisanship,
he has been represented, in his earlier government under James the
Second, as an abettor of tyranny; but by others of them, appearing to
have possessed the best means of judging of the circumstances under
which he acted, his conduct has been liberally estimated. His later
administration, under William the Third, is allowed to have been
irreproachable. All the colonies advanced greatly in improvement whilst
under his charge; and the fact that he was distinguished by the marked
approval and successive appointments of his several sovereigns, after,
no less than before, the Revolution, cannot but be interpreted as the
strongest testimonial in his favor, and highly to the honor of his
reputation.”
Chalmers remarks (_Political Annals_, i. 422): “The charges of greatest
magnitude were not the faults of the governor, but of the constitution;
the smaller accusations arose from actions directly contrary to his
instructions. Did he act contrary to them and to his commission, he
had been the most faithless of servants, and most criminal of men. But
he did not. For, when the agents of the province impeached him before
William, they accused him not of acting inconsistent with either,
but of having exercised an authority unconstitutional and tyrannous.
His conduct was approved of by James; and he was again appointed a
colonial governor by William, because he equally appeared to him
worthy of trust. Unhappily oppressed by a real tyranny, the colonists
of those days beheld every action with diseased eyes, and their
distempers have descended in a great measure to their historians, who
have retailed political fictions as indubitable truths.” And again:
“What a spectacle does the administration of Andros hold up to mankind
for their instruction; under a form of government, plainly arbitrary
and tyrannous, more real liberty was actually enjoyed than under the
boasted system, which appeared so fair.”
[151] _Doc. Hist. of N. Y._, i. 179.
IV.
THE LOYALISTS.
The opportunity of uniting together the colonies was lost when the
government of England, under William and Mary, condoned the rebellion
in Massachusetts, and allowed Connecticut and Rhode Island to resume
their charters. From that time onward, union under the royal authority
was impossible, even in the face of the pressing dangers of the French
and Indian wars, to which for over sixty years the colonies were almost
continuously exposed. Futile attempts were made, but in face of such
a triumph of individualism nothing could be accomplished. When the
conference at Albany, in 1754, put forth a plan of federation, drawn
up by Benjamin Franklin and studiously moderate in its provisions, it
was rejected with indignation by the colonies, as tending to servitude,
and by the authorities in England, as incurably democratic.[152] Yet
the attempt that had been made had, at least, one result: it had
created what we may call an imperial party, the members of which were
devotedly attached to the connection with Great Britain, and opposed
to that narrow spirit so prevalent in the colonies, which esteemed
nothing as of value in comparison with their local customs and local
privileges. This party grew strong in New York, where the extravagances
of Leisler’s insurrection had called for stern chastisement, and was
also well represented in New England. The new charter of Massachusetts,
which gave it a governor appointed by the crown, while preserving
its Assembly and its town organizations, had tended to encourage
and develop, even in that fierce democracy, those elements of a
conservative party which had been called into existence some years
before by the disloyalty and tyranny of the ecclesiastical oligarchy.
Thus, side by side with a group of men who were constantly regretting
their lost autonomy, and looking with suspicion and prejudice at
every action of the royal authorities, there arose this other group
of those who constantly dwelt upon, and frequently exaggerated, the
advantages they derived from their connection with the mother country.
In Connecticut there was a strong minority that had opposed the
re-assumption of the charter after the overthrow of Andros; and in all
the royal provinces an official class was gradually growing up, that
was naturally imperial rather than local in its sympathies. The Church
of England, also, had at last waked up to a sense of the spiritual
needs of its children beyond the seas, and by means of the Society for
the Propagation of the Gospel was sending devoted and self-sacrificing
missionaries to labor among the people of the colonies.[153] The
influence of this tended inevitably to maintain and strengthen the
feeling of national unity in those of the colonists who came under
the ministrations of the missionaries. In the colony of Connecticut,
especial strength was given to this movement by an unexpected religious
revolution, in which several of the prominent ministers of the ruling
congregational body, and many of the best of the laity, forsook their
separatist principles and returned to the historic church of the old
home.[154] The wars with the French, in which colonists fought side by
side with regulars, in a contest of national significance, tended upon
the whole to intensify the sense of imperial unity; although there can
be no doubt that the British officers generally, by their contemptuous
speeches and by their insolent manner towards the colonials whom they
affected to despise, prepared the way for the eventual rupture of
sentiment between the colonies and England.[155]
It is hardly an exaggeration to say that neither navigation laws nor
the Stamp Act nor parliamentary interference had as much to do in
alienating the affections of Americans from the mother country, as had
the ill-mannered impertinence of the British officers and the royal
officials. This insolence, when joined to Grenville’s bungling and
exasperating attempt to extend imperial taxation to the colonies, had
the result of uniting for a time nearly all Americans in opposition to
the measures proposed by the advisers of the king, and enabled them to
win a great constitutional victory over the attempt to impose stamp
duties upon them. The division into two distinct parties, though as
has been pointed out the groups had been gradually forming and drawing
apart from one another, did not really come into definite existence
until the further impolitic measures of successive ministries had
strengthened the hands of those who were traditionally disposed to
resist the authority of England.
It is very hard for us to put ourselves in the place of men of a
century ago, and to think their thoughts and surround ourselves in
imagination with their environment; we naturally carry back much of
the nineteenth century into the eighteenth. We know the America of
to-day, a vigorous, healthy, prosperous, mighty nation, reaching from
sea to sea, filled with a busy people, adorned with the achievements
of a hundred years, hallowed by many sacred memories. The American
flag has floated proudly through the smoke of battle in every quarter
of the world, and for a hundred years men have seen in it the symbol
of a country and a fatherland. It is difficult for us to realize
that, before 1776, these influences had no power; there was then no
nation, no country, no fatherland, no flag, nothing but a number of
not over-prosperous colonies, with but little love or liking for one
another. Even the strongest Americans did not venture to use the word
_nation_ or its derivatives, but called their congress, even after the
formal separation from England, simply the Continental Congress. The
very considerations which show us how wonderful and even sublime were
the faith and the devotion of the leaders of the American revolution,
will also show us how natural it was, how almost inevitable it
was, that other men, whose connection with England was closer and
more intimate, whose habits of mind were conservative rather than
progressive, who had been brought up to fear God and honor the king
and to think more about their duties than about their rights, should
cling with devotion to the cause of the mother-country and condemn the
revolution as a “parricidal rebellion.”
Besides this highest motive, which influenced the best and the
purest-minded among the opponents of colonial separation, there were
undoubtedly other motives of lower character, which affected some men
in their decision, and disposed them to loyalty. The political power
of all the colonies had been largely in the hands of those who were
known as the “better sort,” usually gentlemen of good family, rich
and well educated; in some of the colonies official position had been
treated as the special prerogative of a few distinguished families who
contended with one another for its possession: none of the colonies,
not even Connecticut, was democratic as we understand the term to-day.
In some cases the revolutionary movements and impulses came from a
class which wished to occupy public positions from which they had
been excluded, and in others from dissatisfied and discontented men of
birth and family, who were tired of being out in the cold, while their
rivals were enjoying the pleasures and emoluments of office.[156] Thus
in New York, the history of the revolution is closely bound up with the
family feuds of the De Lanceys on the one side with the Livingstons on
the other. In Massachusetts, the quarrel between Governor Bernard and
the Otises did much to increase the patriotism of the latter family;
and until the very breaking out of hostilities, the contest within
the colony was between a majority of the well-to-do merchants and
lawyers of Boston on the one side, and the least stable elements of the
populace, under the leadership of one of the most skilful of political
agitators, Samuel Adams, upon the other.
There is no doubt that, in Massachusetts at least, most well-to-do
persons considered the agitation at first to be merely political,
the usual device of the “outs” against the “ins”; they laughed at
the loud talk of some of the orators, and considered that it was put
on for effect.[157] When, in addition to this, the cause of American
rights was disgraced, year after year, by riots, murder, arson, and
sedition, those who were entrusted with the responsibilities of office,
however much they sympathized with the abstract principles that were
upheld by the popular leaders, were prejudiced against the concrete
application of them.[158] We should also remember that, down to the
time of the battle of Bunker Hill, if not later, all parties united
in the most loyal and devoted language. The rights that were claimed
were not the rights of Man, but of “natural-born subjects of the king
of Great Britain”; the king was always described as “the best and
most generous of monarchs,” and separation was never mentioned as a
possibility in any public utterance. War was looked forward to by some
of the most eager as a means of bringing the ministry to terms, or as
an unavoidable necessity if the unconstitutional taxation was persisted
in; but, up to the very last, most men agreed with Richard Henry Lee,
who said to Adams, as they parted after the first Continental Congress
in 1774: “All offensive acts will be repealed--Britain will give up her
foolish project.”[159]
When the most ardent American patriots used this language, and used
it sincerely, it is not remarkable that those who formed the opposing
political party, who were conservative when these were the radicals,
should have felt that they were bound by their duty to their king
and country, or that they should also have felt that the disorderly
actions and the factious attitude of some of the extreme patriots in
Massachusetts and elsewhere were simply seditious. These convictions
were undoubtedly strengthened by the abominable treatment which many
of them personally received. They were not apt to look with greater
favor upon a cause whose votaries had tried to recommend it to their
liking by breaking their windows, plundering their houses, constantly
insulting them, their wives and their daughters, to say nothing of
tarring and feathering them, or of burning them in effigy. The penal
measures imposed by the Parliament upon the town of Boston and the
colony of Massachusetts had been brought upon themselves by the
so-called patriots. One rather wonders at the slowness and mildness
of the British government, and at their miserable inefficiency, than
at any repressive measures that they undertook. They deserved to lose
the colonies for their invincible stupidity, which led them from one
blunder into another; they irritated when they ought either to have
crushed or conciliated; they tried half-measures when vigorous action
was necessary; they persisted in affronting all the other colonies
while they failed in chastising sedition in Massachusetts. The result
was that they drove many men, who were loyal subjects of Great Britain
in 1774, into revolution in 1776, while they allowed the rebels of
Massachusetts to wreak vengeance at their will upon those who had been
faithful in their allegiance to their king.[160]
Besides those who were loyalists from conviction and temperament and
those who were almost unavoidably so from the political position they
occupied, there were also men who were loyalists from the profit it
gave them. Such were the holders of the minor offices in the gift
of the royal governors, the rich merchants who represented English
trading-houses, and dreaded war and disturbance. There were others
whose chief desire was to be upon the winning side, who were unable
to conceive the possibility of the defeat of the English government
by a handful of insurgent colonists, and some also who, from local
or personal dislikes or prejudices, or from love of opposition, took
a different side from that which was taken by their neighbors. It
is probable, however, that there were hardly any whose motives were
not to some extent mixed; few on the one hand so disinterested or
so devoted as not to be moved in some degree by self-interest or
prejudice, few on the other hand whose nature was so biassed by
prejudice or so sordid with love of place or pension as not also to be
moved by the higher impulse of fidelity.
Loyalty is hard to define; it is one of those virtues which appeals
not so much to the head as to the heart. Its critics accuse it of
being irrational and illogical, as being based upon sentiment rather
than upon conviction. Yet, in spite of logic and reason, or rather,
on account of its profounder logic and higher reason, loyalty will
hold its own, and strike an answering chord of admiration in the human
heart as long as men appreciate disinterested virtue. It may be classed
with the other unreasoned qualities that men yet esteem, with faith
and truth, honor and courage, decency and chastity. It may be a man’s
intellectual duty to follow the dictates of his understanding and to
act upon his temporary convictions, whatever pain the action cost;
nevertheless, the man whom we respect and follow is not the man who is
always changing, who is easily influenced by argument, but the man who
abides by certain fixed principles, and refuses to desert them, unless
it can be shown him that beyond all chance of mistake they are wrong
and misleading.
It has been sometimes asserted that loyalty can only be felt towards a
personal ruler or a dynasty; such a restriction of the term is entirely
unfounded. It is, by its very derivation, devotion to that which is
legal and established. Legality and Loyalty are etymologically the
same. No one can doubt that there is a high and noble devotion to
right and justice which is as admirable and as strong as a devotion
to any person. It is a more refined sentiment and appeals to a higher
moral sense than does the simple fidelity to a person, beautiful and
touching though such devotion be. The loyalty of men who, like the
younger Verneys, espoused the side of the Parliament in its struggle
with Charles the First, was as true and real a sentiment, though its
character was impersonal, as was that of the stout Sir Edmund, who,
though “he liked not the quarrel,” followed the king, because “he had
eaten his bread too long to turn against him in his necessity.” There
could hardly be a finer example of this loyalty to an idea than was
shown by those Americans who condemned the stupid errors of the king
and his advisers, and realized fully the danger to liberty in the
system of government that George the Third was attempting to carry
out in England and in America, and yet, in spite of all, remained
patriotic subjects, not from affection but from principle, trusting
to constitutional methods to overcome the evils which they felt as
strongly as any of those who made them a justification for revolution.
As has been shown, among those who adhered to the side of the mother
country in the revolution there were men of all kinds and convictions.
There were those who were loyal because they believed in the legal
right of the Parliament to tax the colonies, short-sighted as the
policy might be, and considered their duty and their allegiance to be
due to the united empire. There were those who adhered to the king’s
cause from personal devotion to him and to his dynasty, an unreasonable
devotion in the eyes of some, but certainly not as contemptible as
American satirists have loved to describe it. There were those who were
by nature conservatives, willing to do anything sooner than change,
governed completely by a prejudice which hardly deserves the noble name
of loyalty, but still had in it an element of steadiness and sturdiness
that redeems it from contempt. There were also, undoubtedly, men who
calculated the chances of victory in the struggle and espoused the
side that they thought was likely to win; there were those who were
for the king from pure gregariousness, because some of their friends
and neighbors were on that side; and, finally, some who, from a mere
love of opposition, set themselves against the cause of America because
their neighbors and townsmen favored it.
And, as the motives which impelled men were different, so also their
actions differed when the rupture came between the king and the
colonies. Some were active favorers of the cause of the king, doing
whatever they could to assist it and to injure the cause of their
rebellious neighbors. Others sadly left their homes at the outbreak of
the war and took refuge in England or in some of the English provinces,
suffering want, anxiety, and despair, snubbed and despised by the
insular English, compelled to hear America and Americans insulted,
dragging along a miserable existence, like that of the shades whom
Virgil found upon the bank of the infernal river, not allowed to return
to earth or to enter either Elysium or Tartarus. Others attempted
to live in peaceful neutrality in America, experiencing the usual
fate of neutrals, animals like the bat neither beast nor bird but
plundered and persecuted by both. Such betook themselves usually to the
protection of the British arms, and were to be found in the greatest
numbers at or near the headquarters of the British generals in Savannah
or Charlestown, Newport or New York.
Some American writers have been extremely severe upon the Americans who
served in the royal armies; such condemnation is certainly illogical
and unjust. They were fighting, they might have reasoned, to save their
country from mob rule, from the dominion of demagogues and traitors,
and to preserve to it what, until then, all had agreed to be the
greatest of blessings--the connection with Great Britain, the privilege
and honor of being Englishmen, heirs of all the free institutions which
were embodied in the “great and glorious constitution.”
If the loyalists of New York, Georgia, and the Carolinas reasoned in
this manner, we cannot blame them, unless we are ready to maintain
the proposition that the cause of every revolution is necessarily so
sacred that those who do not sympathize with it should at least abstain
from forcibly opposing it. The further charge is made that the worst
outrages of the war were committed by Tories, and the ill-doings of
Brant and Butler at Wyoming and Cherry Valley, together with the raids
of Tryon and Arnold, are held up to the execration of posterity as
being something exceptionally brutal and cruel, unparalleled by any
similar actions on the part of the Whig militia or the regular forces
of either army, Sullivan’s campaign through the Indian country being
conveniently forgotten.[161] Impartial history will not palliate the
barbarities that were committed by either party; but there can be no
doubt that the Tory wrong-doings have been grossly exaggerated, or at
least have been dwelt upon as dreadful scenes of depravity to form a
background for the heroism and fortitude of the patriotic party whose
misdeeds are passed over very lightly. The methods of the growth of
popular mythology have been the same in America as elsewhere; the
gods of one party have become the devils of the other. The haze of
distance has thrown a halo around the American leaders, softening their
outlines, obscuring their faults, while the misdeeds of Tories and
Hessians have grown with the growth of years. But it is an undoubted
fact that there were outrages upon both sides, brutal officers on both
sides, bad treatment of prisoners on both sides, guerilla warfare
with all its evil concomitants on both sides, and in these respects
the Tories were no worse than the Whigs. There was not much to choose
between a Cowboy and a Skinner, very little difference between Major
Ferguson’s command and that of Marion and Sumter. There was no more
orderly or better-behaved troop in either army than Simcoe’s Queen’s
Rangers;[162] possibly there was none on either side as bad as the
mixture of Iroquois Indians and Tory half-breeds who were concerned in
the massacres at Wyoming and Cherry Valley.
The Americans, however, do not deserve any credit for abstaining from
the use of Indian allies. They tried very hard to make use of them, but
without success. A few Englishmen in the Mohawk Valley, faithful to the
traditions of just and honest treatment of the Indians, which had been
inherited from the Dutch, had succeeded in making the Iroquois regard
them as friends, but everywhere else the Indian and the colonist were
bitter and irreconcilable foes. The savage had long scores of hatred to
pay, not upon the English nation or English army, but upon the American
settlers who had stolen his lands, shot his sons, and debauched his
daughters. The employment of the Mohawks by the English was an outrage
and a crying shame upon civilization; but the responsibility of it
lies directly upon the government which allowed it, and the commanding
generals who sanctioned the expeditions, and only indirectly upon
the men who carried out the directions of their superiors.[163] It
is interesting to remember in this connection that the courteous and
chivalrous Lafayette raised a troop of Indians to fight the British
and the Tories, though his reputation has been saved by the utter and
almost ludicrous failure of his attempt. The fact is that, as far as
the Americans were engaged in it, the war of the Revolution was a
civil war, in which the two sides were not far different in numbers
or in social condition, and very much the same in their manners and
customs. The loyalists contended all through the war that they were in
a numerical majority, and that if they had been properly supported by
the British forces and properly treated by the British generals, the
war could have been ended in 1777, before the French alliance had given
new hopes and new strength to the separatist party.[164]
Sabine, in his well-known work on the loyalists of the Revolution,
computes that there were at least twenty thousand Americans in
the military service of the king at one time or another during the
war.[165] Other authorities think this estimate too high, but the
number was extremely large. In New York and New Jersey it is probable
that the opponents of separation outnumbered the patriot party, and
the same is probably true of the Carolinas and Georgia. Even in New
England, the nursery of the Revolution, the number was large and so
formidable, in the opinion of the revolutionary leaders, that in order
to suppress them they established a reign of terror and anticipated
the famous “Law of the Suspected” of the French Revolution. An
irresponsible tyranny was established of town and country committees
at whose beck and call were the so-called “Sons of Liberty.” To these
committees was entrusted an absolute power over the lives and fortunes
of their fellow-citizens, and they proceeded on principles of evidence
that would have shocked and scandalized a grand inquisitor.
Virginia and Maryland seem to have been the only provinces in which the
body of the people sympathized with the projects of the revolutionary
leaders. The few loyalists there were in Virginia retired to England
with the last royal governor, and in Maryland a strong sense of local
independence and local pride led the colony to act with unanimity and
moderation.
The rigorous measures adopted by the new governments in the Eastern
States, and the activity of their town committees, succeeded in either
driving out their loyalist citizens or reducing them to harmless
inefficiency. In New York and New Jersey, however, they remained strong
and active throughout the war; and as long as the British forces held
Georgia and the Carolinas, loyalty was in the ascendant in those states.
The question will naturally be asked, why, if they were so numerous,
were they not more successful, why did they yield to popular violence
in New England and desert the country while the contest was going on,
why did they not hold the Southern States and keep them from joining
the others in the Continental Congresses and in the war. In the first
place, a negative attitude is necessarily an inactive one; and in
consequence of this and of the fact that they could not take the
initiative in any action, the loyalists were put at a disadvantage
before the much better organization of the patriotic leaders. Though
these were few in number, in the South they were of the best families
and of great social influence, and in the North they were popular
agitators of long experience. They manipulated the committee system so
carefully that the colonies found themselves, before they were aware of
the tendency of the actions of their deputies, involved in proceedings
of very questionable legality, such as the boycotting agreement
known as the American Association, and the other proceedings of the
Continental Congress.[166] When the war began, the population of the
three southernmost states had very little care, except for their own
lives and pockets. They were, with the exception of a few distinguished
families, descendants of a very low grade of settlers. Oglethorpe’s
philanthropy had left the legacy of disorder and inefficiency to the
colony of Georgia, a legacy which the Empire State of the South has now
nobly and grandly outlived. North Carolina had a most heterogeneous
population, and was, perhaps, the most barbarous of all the colonies;
while in South Carolina the extremes in the social scale were most
strongly marked, from the high-spirited Huguenot gentlemen to the poor
whites who formed the bulk of the population, worse taught, worse fed,
and worse clad than the negro slaves. Such a population as this,
living also in constant fear of negro insurrection, was not likely to
count for much on the one side or the other; and we shall find, if we
read Gates’s and Greene’s dispatches on the one side, and Rawdon’s
and Cornwallis’s on the other, that the rival commanders agree in
one thing at least--in condemning and despising the worthlessness of
the militia recruited in the southern country.[167] It was the utter
cowardice of this militia that lost the battle of Camden and caused the
needless sacrifice of the lives of the braver Continentals; and the
correspondence of the English general is full of instances that prove
that, except for plundering and bushwhacking, there was little use to
be made of the loyalists in the South.
As to the other questions, why, when the loyalists were so numerous,
were they not more successful, and why did the eastern loyalists yield
to the violence that was offered them, one question nearly answers the
other. They were not successful, because they had no leaders of their
own stock and country, and because the British commanders blundered
throughout the war with as unerring certainty and unfailing regularity
as the various British ministries had done from 1764 to 1776. The game
was in the hands of the English, if they had known how to play it, for
the first three years of the war. Then English inefficiency, rather
than any belief in the ability of the colonists to make good their own
independence, brought about the French alliance; and the war assumed
from thenceforward a very different aspect. The desertion of their
cause and their country by the many Tories who left New England for
Great Britain or the loyal provinces, and the supineness of the men of
place and position who attempted to preserve an attitude of neutrality
instead of siding openly either for or against the king, weakened the
king’s cause in America and prevented the numbers of the loyalist
population from counting for as much as they were really worth.
The clever French diplomatist who collected and translated the
correspondence of Lord George Germaine with the British generals and
admirals, a remarkably well-informed critic of the military operations
in America, states in his Preface his opinion as follows: “Another
thing which clearly proves that the affairs of the English have been
badly conducted in America, is that the American loyalists alone were
superior in number to the rebels. How, then, has it come to pass that
troops double in numbers, well paid and wanting nothing, aided besides
by a German army, have failed in opposing the partisans of liberty,
who, badly paid and badly equipped, often lacked everything? Manifestly
it is in the different capacity of the commanders that we must seek for
the counterweight which has turned the scale in favor of the latter.
If the English had had a Washington at the head of their army there
would long since have been no more question of war on the American
Continent.... M. Linguet has said somewhere in his annals that the
secretaries of the Congress were better than the secretaries of the
English generals. The same may be said of the generals themselves.”[168]
Besides being inefficient in the field, the British commanders
alienated their friends and weakened the attachment of the loyalists
to the cause of the king by their extremely impolitic treatment of
the American provinces within their occupation. The regular officers
made no secret of their contempt for the colonists, and plundered them
without mercy, making little, if any, distinction between loyalist or
rebel, Tory or Whig. Judge Thomas Jones, a New Yorker of prominence and
position, who was a devoted loyalist and one of the number especially
singled out by name in the Act of Confiscation and Attainder passed
by his native state, has left us his record of the way in which the
British officers and officials exasperated rather than conciliated
the Americans, and punished rather than rewarded the loyal for their
attachment to the king and the integrity of the empire. He writes: “In
1780, part of the army went into winter quarters upon the westernmost
end of the island, where they robbed, plundered, and pillaged the
inhabitants of their cattle, hogs, sheep, poultry, and, in short, of
anything they could lay their hands upon. It was no uncommon thing of
an afternoon to see a farmer driving a flock of turkeys, geese, ducks,
or dunghill fowls and locking them up in his cellar for security at
night.... It was no uncommon thing for a farmer, his wife and children
to sleep in one room, while his sheep were bleating in the room
adjoining, his hogs grunting in the kitchen, and the cocks crowing,
hens cackling, ducks quacking, and geese hissing in the cellar.... This
robbing was done by people sent to America to protect loyalists against
the persecutions and depredations of rebels. To complain was needless;
the officers shared in the plunder.” In Newtown, a Hessian soldier
opened a butcher’s shop, where he undersold all competitors, because
while they had to pay for their meat he had no such outlay. In 1781,
when the troops left Flushing, a resident of that place wrote, “There
was not a four-footed animal (a few dogs excepted) left in Flushing,
nor a wooden fence.”
We cannot wonder at the indignant words with which Mr. Jones closes his
recital of this vandalism. “If Great Britain had, instead of governing
by military law, by courts of police, and courts martial, revived the
civil law, opened the courts of justice, invested the civil magistrates
with their full power, and convened general assemblies in New York, New
Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, and in South and North
Carolina (as well as in Georgia, where it produced the most salutary
effects), as the rebels abandoned these provinces and fled before
the British arms; and prevented, by severely punishing, all kinds of
plunder, rapine, and pillage committed by the army, the rebellion
in all probability would have terminated in a different manner. The
empire would not have been disgraced or dishonored, nor Great Britain
reduced to the necessity of asking pardon of her ungrateful children,
acknowledging herself in the wrong, and granting them absolute,
unconditional independence. But, alas! the very reverse of this
marked every step in the royal army in all its proceedings, and Great
Britain, as well as the Independent States of America, feel to this
day the dire effects of a conduct so very impolitic, so unmilitary, so
unjustifiable, and so repugnant to the Constitution, the spirit, the
honor, and the sentiments of Englishmen.[169]
And now let us inquire how the loyalists were treated by the new
governments of the various states. Besides the irregular violence to
which the unfortunate loyalists were exposed at the hands of Sons of
Liberty and town committeemen, they were marked out for punishment
and plunder by the new state governments as they came into existence.
The State of Massachusetts proscribed three hundred and eight persons
by name, whom it condemned, if ever found within its borders, to
imprisonment and eventual banishment; and if they ventured to return,
it denounced the death penalty upon them. Not all of these were the
wealthy merchants and lawyers who had offended the populace by their
addresses to Hutchinson and Gage; at least a fifth of the number were
from the middle classes of society, and some of them were of still
humbler position. The State of New Hampshire, small as its population
was at that time, banished seventy-six by name and confiscated
twenty-eight estates. New York attainted and confiscated the property
of fifty-nine persons by name, three of whom were women whose chief
offence lay in the attractiveness of their estates. Pennsylvania
summoned sixty-two persons to surrender themselves for trial for
treason, and on their failing to appear they were pronounced attainted,
and thirty-six estates were confiscated. In Delaware the property of
forty-six refugees was confiscated. In North Carolina, sixty-five
estates were confiscated. In South Carolina, for the offence of
attachment to the royal cause in different degrees of offensiveness,
two hundred and fifteen persons were either fined twelve per cent.
of their entire property, or deprived of it wholly, or banished from
the country.[170] In Rhode Island, death and confiscation of estate
were the punishments provided by law for any person who communicated
with the ministry or their agents, afforded supplies to their forces,
or piloted the armed ships of the king; and certain persons were
pronounced by name enemies to liberty, and their property forfeited
in consequence. In Connecticut, where the loyalists were very numerous
but inclined to be quiet if they were let alone, these offences only
involved loss of estate and of liberty for a term not exceeding three
years; but to speak, write, or act against the doings of Congress or
the Assembly of Connecticut was punishable by disqualification from
office, imprisonment, and the disarming the offender. The estates of
those who sought the royal fleets or land forces for shelter might,
by law, be seized and confiscated. In her treatment of loyalists
Connecticut showed the same shrewd sense that had characterized the
proceedings of that republic from its earliest days; and the result was
seen in the fact that the loyalists, instead of being alienated, became
after the war was over some of her best and most patriotic citizens.
William Samuel Johnson, who during part of the war, at least, was under
surveillance as a suspected Tory, but who when the war was over was one
of Connecticut’s delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1787,
and Seabury, the author of the clever and exasperating “A. W. Farmer”
letters, who had been pulled through the mud by Sons of Liberty at
New Haven, were none the less loyal citizens of the commonwealth and
of the nation, and none the less respected by men who had differed
from them, because they had been loyal to their convictions of duty.
In Massachusetts, the feeling was much more bitter, and, in addition
to the special act already mentioned, any person suspected of enmity
to the Whig cause might be arrested under a magistrate’s warrant and
banished, unless he would swear fealty to the friends of liberty;
and the selectmen of towns could prefer in town meeting charges of
political treachery and the individual thus accused, if convicted by a
jury, could be sent into the enemy’s jurisdiction. By a second special
act the property of twenty-nine persons, “notorious conspirators,” was
confiscated; of these, fifteen had been “mandamus” councillors; two,
governors of the province; one, lieutenant-governor; one, treasurer;
one, secretary; one, attorney-general; one, chief-justice; and four,
commissioners of customs. The State of Virginia, though passing no
special acts, passed a resolution that persons of a given description
should be deemed and treated as aliens, and that their property should
be sold and the proceeds go into the public treasury for future
disposal. In New York, the county commissioners were authorized
to apprehend and decide upon the guilt of such inhabitants as were
supposed to hold correspondence with the enemy or who had committed
some other specified acts, and might punish those whom they adjudged to
be guilty with imprisonment for three months or banishment for seven
years. Persons opposed to liberty and independence were prohibited from
the practice of law in the courts; and any parent whose sons went off
and adhered to the enemy was subject to a tax of ninepence in the pound
value of such parent’s estate for each and every such son.
The Congress naturally left such matters largely to the individual
states, but nevertheless passed a resolution subjecting to martial
law and death all who should furnish provisions, etc., to the British
army in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, and resolved that all
loyalists taken in arms should be sent to the states to which they
belonged, there to be dealt with as traitors.[171]
In regard to this subject of legal attainder and exile, Mr. Sabine
remarks very moderately and sensibly: “Nor is it believed that either
the banishment, or the confiscation laws, as they stood, were more
expedient than just. The latter did little towards relieving the
public necessities, and served only to create a disposition for
rapacity, and to increase the wealth of favored individuals. Had the
estates, which were seized and sold, been judiciously or honestly
managed, a considerable sum would have found its way to the treasury;
but, as it was, the amount was inconsiderable, some of the wisest and
purest Whigs of the time hung their heads in shame, because of the
passage of measures so unjustifiable, and never ceased to speak of them
in terms of severe reprobation. Mr. Jay’s disgust was unconquerable,
and he never would purchase any property that had been forfeited under
the Confiscation Act of New York.”[172]
Curwen, a Salem loyalist who was allowed to return after the war,
writes in terms that, though exaggerated, yet describe the result upon
public morals of the confiscations:
“So infamously knavish has been the conduct of the commissioners,
that though frequent attempts have been made to bring them to
justice, and respond for the produce of the funds resting in their
hands, so numerous are the defaulters in _that august body_, the
General Court, that all efforts have hitherto proved in vain. Not
twopence in the pound have arrived to the public treasury of all the
confiscations.”[173]
It only now remains to notice the treatment the unfortunate loyalists
received from their friends in England and the manner in which the
British government--for which they had sacrificed home, friends, and
property, and had embraced exile, contempt, and penury--threw them
upon the tender mercies of their opponents in the treaty of peace.
This surrender of their interests by Lord Shelburne called out, in
both Houses of the Parliament, expressions of sympathetic indignation;
but the sympathy never took any material shape. Sheridan, in the House
of Commons, execrated the treatment of these unfortunate men, “who,
without the least notice taken of their civil and religious rights,
were handed over as subjects to a power that would not fail to take
vengeance on them for their zeal and attachment to the religion and
government of the ‘mother country.’” In the House of Lords, Lord
Loughborough said, “that neither in ancient nor modern history had
there been so shameful a desertion of men who had sacrificed all to
their duty and to their reliance upon British faith.”
To such charges Lord Shelburne could only reply by a feeble appeal to
the mercy of his condemners: “I have but one answer to give the House;
it is the answer I give my own bleeding heart. A part must be wounded
that the whole of the empire may not perish. If better terms could be
had, think you, my lords, that I would not have embraced them? I had
but the alternative either to accept the terms proposed or continue the
war.”[174]
Lord Shelburne’s statement was correct. He had entered upon the
negotiations for peace full of sympathy for the loyalists and resolved
to make their cause the cause of England; but when, to his attempts to
obtain for them the restoration of their property and the abolition of
penal laws, was opposed a steady _non possumus_, his enthusiasm for his
persecuted fellow-countrymen waned; and when at last it was plainly
suggested to him that a year’s prolongation of the war would cost
more than all the loyalists’ property put together, he consented to
accept the assurance, the futility and emptiness of which was evident
upon the face of it, that “Congress shall earnestly recommend” to the
several states to repeal the laws of attainder and confiscation which
had been passed against the Tories and their property. One of the
American negotiators brusquely remarked that it was better and more
proper that the loyalists should be compensated by their friends than
by their enemies. This desertion of their interests almost broke the
hearts of some of the best and most public-spirited of the loyalists,
who had given up everything for the cause of their country, and now
saw themselves consigned to poverty in their old age, or at the best
to supplicating aid of the British government and being exposed to
all “the insolence of office and the scorns that patient merit of the
unworthy takes.”[175]
It took a long time to adjust the claims and to distribute the bounty
which was doled out by unwilling officials. It was 1783 when the war
closed, but not until 1790 was the indemnity paid out to the claimants;
and then England forced her unfortunate pensioners, made paupers by
their trust in her, to accept about £3,300,000 for losses reckoned at
over £8,000,000. It is estimated that over a thousand claimants had in
the mean time perished in want and penury. Those were on the whole more
fortunate, as events proved, who had braved it out in America than were
those who had trusted to the gratitude of England.[176]
What was the loss of America was the gain to her nearest neighbors,
the coast provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. As early as 1775
the exodus from Boston to Halifax had begun; and when Howe evacuated
the city, a large number of loyalists took refuge with the fleet and
army, and leaving all behind came to Halifax to seek their fortunes
under another sky. From that time on, throughout the war, Halifax was
the haven of refuge for persecuted loyalists.[177] At the evacuation
of New York and Savannah no fewer than 30,000 persons left the United
States for Nova Scotia. Halifax was so crowded that houses could not
be had at any price, and provisions were held at famine prices.[178]
From northern New York and Vermont the loyalists crossed over into
Upper Canada and laid the foundation of that prosperous province under
the vigorous government of Governor Simcoe, who during the war had
commanded a regiment of loyalist rangers which had done efficient
service.[179] With many a suffering, many a privation, these exiles for
conscience’ sake toiled to make homes for themselves in the wilderness,
and it is to them that the development of those provinces is due.
Familiar New England names meet one at every turn in these provinces,
especially in Nova Scotia. Dr. Inglis of Trinity Church, New York, was
the first bishop, and Judge Sewall of Massachusetts, the first chief
justice there. The harshness of the laws and the greed of the new
commonwealths thus drove into exile men who could be ill spared, and
whose absence showed itself in the lack of balance and of political
steadiness that characterized the early history of the Republic. This,
moreover, perpetuated a traditional dislike, grudge, and suspicion
between the people of the United States and their nearest neighbors,
men of the same blood and the same speech; while the new-founded
colonies, composed almost exclusively of conservatives, were naturally
slow, if sure, in their development.
This dislike and suspicion is now fortunately diminishing with the
lapse of years, but it was a great pity it ever was created. The men
who were willing to give up home, friends, and property for an idea,
are not men to be despised or laughed at, as was the fashion of the
generation which roared with delight over the coarse buffooneries of
Trumbull’s McFingal. They are rather men for us to claim with pride,
and to honor as Americans, Americans who were true to their convictions
of duty, confessors for their political faith.
Sabine relates the following conversation:
“‘Why did you come here, when you and your associates were almost
certain to endure the sufferings and absolute want of shelter and food
which you have now narrated?’ asked an American gentleman of one of the
first settlers of St. John, New Brunswick, a man whose life ... was
without a stain. ‘Why did we come here?’ replied he, with emotion that
brought tears;--‘for our loyalty; think you that our principles were
not as dear to us as were yours to you?’”[180]
NOTES.
[152] Franklin’s _Memoirs_ (London, 1818, p. 201), (Sparks, p. 176).
“In 1754, war with France being again apprehended, a congress of
commissioners from the different colonies was by an order of the lords
of trade to be assembled in Albany; there to confer with the chiefs of
the six nations, concerning the means of defending both their country
and ours.
We met the other commissioners at Albany about the middle of June. In
our way thither I projected and drew up a plan for the union of all
the colonies under one government, so far as might be necessary for
defence, and other important general purposes. As we passed through
New York, I had there shown my project to Mr. James Alexander and
Mr. Kennedy, two gentlemen of great knowledge in public affairs, and
being fortified by their approbation, I ventured to lay it before
the congress. It then appeared that several of the commissioners had
formed plans of the same kind. A previous question was first taken,
whether a union should be established, which passed in the affirmative,
unanimously. A committee was then appointed, one member from each
colony, to consider the several plans and report. Mine happened to
be preferred, and with a few amendments was accordingly reported. By
this plan the general government was to be administered by a President
General appointed and supported by the Crown; and a grand Council to
be chosen by the representatives of the people of the several colonies
met in their respective assemblies. The debates upon it in congress
went on daily hand in hand with the Indian business. Many objections
and difficulties were started, but at length they were all overcome,
and the plan was unanimously agreed to, and copies ordered to be
transmitted to the board of trade and to the assemblies of the several
provinces. Its fate was singular: the assemblies did not adopt it, as
they all thought there was too much prerogative in it; and in England
it was judged to have too much of the democratic. The different and
contrary reasons of dislike to my plan make me suspect that it was
really the true medium: and I am still of opinion it would have been
happy for both sides if it had been adopted. The colonies so united
would have been sufficiently strong to have defended themselves:
there would then have been no need of troops from England; of course
the subsequent pretext for taxing America, and the bloody contest it
occasioned, would have been avoided.”
The plan proposed may be found in Franklin’s _Works_ (Sparks, i. 36),
(London, 1833, v. 299); _N. Y. Col. Doc._, vi. 889. The proceedings
of the Congress in _N. Y. Col. Doc._, vi. 853, other accounts of
the Congress by members; Hutchinson, _Hist. Mass. Bay_, iii. 19–25;
William Smith, _History of New York_, ii. 180; Stephen Hopkins, _A
true representation of the plan formed at Albany (in 1754) for uniting
all the British northern Colonies, in order to their common safety and
defence_ (_R. I. Historical Tracts_, No. 9). For an excellent brief
statement of the attempts at consolidation and plans suggested for that
purpose, see Winsor, _Narrative and Critical History of the U. S._, v.
611.
[153] The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts
was founded in 1701. A previous organization bearing a similar name
had been founded during the period of the Commonwealth, especially for
work among the aborigines in New England, and it is to this association
that we owe that most interesting of missionary relics, Eliot’s Indian
Bible. Great interest was taken in this by the celebrated Robert
Boyle, and scholarships were endowed by Sir Leoline Jenkyns in Jesus
College, Oxford, one condition of which was that the beneficiary should
devote his life after taking his degree to missionary work in the
plantations. The reports of Commissary Bray, who had been sent out to
Maryland, of the spiritual destitution of the American colonies and of
the difficulties under which the ministers of the Church of England
labored, led to the organization and incorporation of the Society,
which has been from that day to this an active agency in the spread of
religion and knowledge in the colonies of Great Britain. Humphreys,
_Historical Account of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel_.
Hawkins, _Missions of the Church of England_.
[154] For a full account of this most interesting revolution, see E.
Edwards Beardsley, D. D., _The History of the Church in Connecticut_.
See also _Life and Correspondence of Samuel Johnson, D. D._, and _Yale
College and the Church_ (_History of the American Episcopal Church_,
vol. i. 561). Humphreys, _Historical Account_, 339.
[155] Franklin’s _Memoirs_, vol. i. pp. 218, 220. An amusing instance
of the prevailing ignorance in regard to American affairs even among
its friends is given by Benjamin Vaughan in a note in Franklin’s
_Memoirs_, vol. v. p. 320. “To guard against the incursions of the
Indians a plan was sent over to America (and, as I think, by authority)
suggesting the expediency of clearing away the woods and bushes from
a tract of land, a mile in breadth, and extending along the back of
the colonies.” It is said that this plan was the contribution of Dean
Tucker towards the solution of the Indian problem of the day.
[156] Jones, _Hist. New York_, ii. 291, 559. _Political Magazine_,
Apr., 1780. Hutchinson, _History Mass. Bay_, iii. 86–88, 166 _note_,
254, 293. Hutchinson’s _Diary_, i. 65. For reasons assigned by
Hutchinson for the patriotism of John Adams, _Hist._ iii. 297.
[157] _North American Review_, lix. p. 270 (Sabine). “It may be
asked, why, when the oppressions of the mother country were so very
flagrant and apparent, there was not greater unanimity than appears
to have existed; and why a party, so large in numbers, which in
so many colonies included persons so respectable, and hitherto so
universally esteemed, was seemingly, or in fact, averse to breaking
away from British dominion. These questions have been put to loyalists
themselves. They have answered, that, upon the original formation of
parties, they were generally regarded as the common organizations of
the ins and outs; the one striving to retain, and the other to gain,
patronage and place; and that the mass in taking sides with or against
the royal governors, were stimulated by the hopes which politicians
have always been able to excite in their followers.”
[158] Moore’s _Diary of the American Revolution_, i. 37–52, 138.
_Massachutensis_, Letters I., III., IV. Hutchinson, _History of Mass.
Bay_, iii. passim. A. W. Farmer, _The Congress Canvassed_, p. 8. The
name Tory was given first in 1763, as a title of reproach to officers
of the crown and such as were for keeping up their authority. _Hist.
Mass. Bay_, iii. 103.
[159] Adams’s _Works_, ii. 362.
[160] For the manner in which the temperate remonstrance of the loyal
colony of New York was treated, see _Parliamentary Register_, vol. i.
467–478.
[161] A specimen from a comparatively moderate article upon the
loyalists may serve to substantiate the statement of the text (_No.
Am. Rev._, lxv. p. 142): “The meanest, most dastardly, and most cruel
scenes and deeds of the Revolution were enacted as the proper fruits
of a civil war by a large majority of the Tories, who remained at
home, and who, as regulars, as volunteers, in gangs, or as individual
outlaws, were the instigators of nearly every foul and atrocious act in
the whole strife. It is from these, the majority of the whole number,
that the name of Tory has received its hateful associations, which will
cling to it to the end of time. A class that includes an Arnold and
a Butler can never hope for complete redemption, at least so long as
Judas remains in ‘his own place.’”
One is glad to appeal from this intemperate and exaggerated language
to the essay upon the loyalists by Dr. George E. Ellis, in Winsor’s
_Narrative and Critical History_, vol. vii. It would be as undesirable
as it is unnecessary to supply, as could readily be done, instances of
gross cruelty and barbarity inflicted by the Whigs upon the unfortunate
loyalists “who remained at home.” The Correspondence of Lord Cornwallis
gives a most painful picture of the condition of things in the South
(_Corr._, i. 73), and the letters of Count Fersen, who cannot be
suspected of prejudice, reveal the hardly less savage condition of
affairs in the North. He says, for example, of Rhode Island (_Letters_,
i. 40, 41):
“C’est un pays qui sera fort heureux s’il jouit d’une paix longue,
et si les deux partis qui le divisent à present ne lui font subir le
sort de la Pologne et de tant d’autres républiques. Ces deux partes
sont appelés les Whigs et les Torys. Le premier est entièrement pour
la liberté et l’independance; il est composé de gens de la plus basse
extraction qui ne possédent point de biens; la plupart des habitants de
la compagne en sont. Les Torys sont pour les Anglais, ou, pour mieux
dire, pour la paix, sans trop se soucier d’être libres ou dépendants;
ce sont les gens d’une classe plus distinguée, les seuls qui eussent
des biens dans le pays. Lorsque les Whigs sont les plus forts, ils
pillent les autres tant qu’ils peuvent.”
[162] Simcoe, Lt.-Col. J. G., _A History of the Operations of a
Partisan Corps called the Queen’s Rangers, commanded by Lt.-Col. J. G.
Simcoe, during the war of the American Revolution_. New York: Bartlett
and Welford, 1884, 8vo, pp. 328.
[163] The Americans made several attempts to make use of the Indians:
Montgomery used them in his Canadian expedition; they were in the New
England army which laid siege to Boston; in April, 1776, Washington
wrote to Congress urging their employment in the army, and reported
on July 13th that, without special authority, he had directed General
Schuyler to engage the Six Nations on the best terms he and his
colleagues could procure; and again, submitting the propriety of
engaging the Eastern Indians. John Adams thought “we need not be so
delicate as to refuse me assistance of Indians, provided we cannot keep
them neutral.” A treaty was exchanged with the Eastern Indians on July
17, 1776, whereby they agreed to furnish six hundred Indians for a
regiment which was to be officered by the whites. As a result of this,
the Massachusetts Council subsequently reported that seven Penobscot
Indians, all that could be procured, were enlisted in October for one
year; and in November Major Shaw reported with a few Indians who had
enlisted in the Continental service. Winsor, _Narr. and Crit. Hist._,
vol. vi. 656, 657. The following brief entry in a diary will show that
even among the patriot forces savage customs sometimes found place: “On
Monday the 30th sent out a party for some dead Indians. Toward morning
found them, and skinned two of them from their hips down for boot legs:
one pair for the major, the other for myself.” _Proceedings N. J. Hist.
Soc._, ii. p. 31.
[164] _North American Review_, lix. 264 (Sabine). “The opponents of
the Revolution were powerful in all the thirteen colonies; in some of
them they were nearly if not quite equal in number to its friends the
Whigs. On the departure of Hutchinson he was addressed by upwards of
two hundred merchants, lawyers and other citizens of Boston, Salem and
Marblehead. On arrival of Gage, forty-eight from Salem presented their
dutiful respects; on his retirement he received the ‘Loyal address
from gentlemen and principal inhabitants of Boston’ to the number of
ninety-seven, and eighteen country gentlemen and official personages
who had taken refuge in Boston.” ...
* * * * *
“The division of parties in Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Hampshire
was much the same as in Massachusetts. New York was the loyalists’
stronghold, and contained more of them than any colony in America.
While proof to sustain this assertion can be adduced to almost any
extent, we shall cite but a single though conclusive fact; namely,
that soon after the close of the war the Assembly of that State passed
a bill prohibiting adherents of the crown from holding office, which
was objected to and returned by the Council of Revision, who, among
other reasons for their course, stated, that if it were suffered
to become a law, there would be difficulty, and in some places an
impossibility, of finding men of different political sympathies,
even to conduct the elections. In some of the southern colonies, the
loyalists were almost as numerous as in New York. In the Carolinas it
may be hard to determine which party had the majority; and it will
be found that there were occasions when the royal generals obtained
twelve or fifteen hundred recruits among the inhabitants, merely by
issuing a proclamation or call upon them to stand by their allegiance
to “the best of sovereigns.... Few of the Carolinians would enlist
under the American banner; but after the capitulation (of Charlestown)
they flocked to the royal standard by hundreds.” See also Sabine’s
_Loyalists_, Introductory Sketch; Ryerson, _Loyalists of America_, ii.
57, 124. For remarks on the war, as a civil war, see Ramsay, _Hist.
U. S._, ii. 467–9.
[165] Sabine, i. 65.
[166] A. W. Farmer, _The Congress Canvassed_, pp. 17–19, exhibits the
manner in which delegates to Congress were chosen in New York. “The New
York City committee (a self-appointed body) applied to the supervisors
in the several counties to call the people together and to choose
committees, which committees were to meet in one grand committee; and
this grand committee of committees were to choose the delegates for
the county or to declare their approbation of the New York delegates,
and if any county did not meet and choose their committee it was to
be taken for granted that they acquiesced in the New York choice.”
Again as to delegates chosen by the Assemblies: “The Assembly has no
legal right to act by itself and claim to represent the people in so
doing. The people are not bound by any act of their representatives
till it hath received the approbation of the other branches of the
legislature. Delegates so appointed are, at best, but delegates of
delegates, but representatives of representatives. When therefore the
delegates at Philadelphia, in the preamble to their Bill of Rights, and
in their letter to his Excellency General Gage, stiled their body ‘a
full and free representation of ... all the Colonies from Nova Scotia
to Georgia,’ they were guilty of a piece of impudence which was never
equalled since the world began, and never will be exceeded while it
shall continue.” Again: “No provincial legislature (even if complete)
can give them such powers as were lately exercised at Philadelphia.
The legislative authority of the province cannot extend further than
the province extends. None of its acts are binding one inch beyond its
limits. How then can it give authority to a few persons, to make rules
and laws for the whole continent?... Before such a mode of legislation
can take place, the constitution of our colonies must be subverted and
their present independency on one another must be annihilated.”
The logic of the loyalist writers is unanswerable, and their legal
reasoning is usually correct and precise; the fallacy of their
position was that they were in face of a revolution. Elements had been
introduced into the struggle which, like the presence of an infinite
quantity in an equation, vitiated the reasoning, however correct the
process may have been. The author argues, for example: “To talk of
subjection to the King of Great Britain, while we disclaim submission
to the Parliament of Great Britain, is idle and ridiculous. It is
a distinction made by the American Republicans to serve their own
rebellious purposes, a gilding with which they have enclosed the pill
of sedition, to entice the unwary colonists to swallow it the more
readily down. The King of Great Britain was placed on the throne by
virtue of an Act of Parliament: And he is king of America, by virtue
of being king of Great Britain. He is therefore king of America by Act
of Parliament. And if we disclaim that authority which made him our
king, we, in fact, reject him from being our king, for we disclaim
that authority by which he is king at all.” It may be noticed that the
fundamental Whig doctrine of the supremacy of Parliament, which is here
so strongly urged, was never understood or appreciated by those who
called themselves Whigs in America.
[167] _Clinton-Cornwallis Correspondence_, i. pp. 263, 265.
[168] _Clinton-Cornwallis Correspondence_, ii. pp. 308, 309.
[169] Jones, Thomas, _History of New York_, i. 362–3, 172–176.
[170] _Christian Examiner_, viii. pp. 127, 128 (Dabney). Curwen,
_Journal_, 475, 479.
[171] Sabine, _North American Review_, lix. pp. 287, 288. _Loyalists_,
i. 71–81. Ryerson, _Loyalists of America_, ii. 130, 136.
[172] _No. Am. Rev._, lix. p. 289.
[173] _The Journal and Letters of the late Samuel Curwen_, New York and
Boston, 1842, p. 147.
[174] _Parliamentary History_, vol. xxiii. 411, 412, 430, 481. The
following extracts may be added to those given in the text; Mr. Burke
said: “Better to have left the whole to future negotiation, and to
have been totally silent upon the subject in the treaty, than to have
consented to have set our hands to a gross libel on the national
character, and in our flagitious article plunged the dagger into the
hearts of the loyalists, and manifested our own impotency, ingratitude
and disgrace” (p. 468). In the same debate Mr. Lee said: “Europe,
Asia, Africa and America beheld the dismembership and diminution of
the British Empire. But this, alarming and calamitous as it was, was
nothing when put in competition with another of the crimes of the
present peace, the cession of men into the hands of their enemies, and
delivering over to confiscation, tyranny, resentment and oppression the
unhappy men who trusted to our fair promises and deceitful words. This
was the great ground of his objection: and he called it a disgraceful,
wicked and treacherous peace; inadequate to its object, and such as no
man could vote to be honorable without delivering his character over to
damnation for ever” (p. 492).
[175] Ryerson, ii. 64. Curwen’s _Journal_, 367. Jones, _History of
N. Y._, ii. The bitterness of the mortification, and resentment at the
treatment they had received from the hands of their friends, is well
exhibited in Judge Jones’s remarkable work, which, however trustworthy
or the reverse it may be in other respects, may be followed implicitly
as an exhibition of loyalist feeling towards the mother country.
[176] Jones, ii. 645–654. Wilmot, _Historical View of the Commission
for Enquiry into the Losses, etc._, London, 1815. Ryerson, ii. 159–182.
_Diary and Letters of Thomas Hutchinson_, ii. 435–437. Sabine, i.
86–90. In March, 1784, the number of persons who had preferred their
petitions was 2,063, and the alleged losses £7,046,278, besides
outstanding debts in America amounting to £2,354,135. “In 1788 Mr. Pitt
submitted a plan for classifying the claimants, and of classifying
and apportioning the nature and amount of consolation to be allotted
to each; and to those whose losses had been caused principally by the
deprivation of official or professional incomes, he proposed a system
of pensions. By the 5th of April, this year (1790), the Commissioners
in England had heard and determined 1,680 claims, and had liquidated
the same at the sum of £1,887,548. It appeared, finally, that the
number of applicants from England, and from the Canadian provinces,
attained to the aggregate of 5,072, of which 954 either withdrew their
applications or failed to press them, and the sum of the losses is
stated to have been £8,026,045. Another return is made out by Mr.
J. E. Wilmot, one of the Commissioners, wherein the amount of the
claim is given as £10,358,413, and the amount of the claims allowed at
£3,033,091. The subject was again raised in Parliament in 1821, but
though there was much sympathy expressed for the sufferings of those
who had trusted to their country to recompense their fidelity, the
sympathy exhausted itself in words.” See also Lecky, _England in the
Eighteenth Century_, iv. 268. Curwen, 367, 368.
[177] Ryerson, ii. 127. _No. Am. Rev._, lix. 279. Hawkins, _Missions of
the Church of England_, 249. _The Frontier Missionary, or Life of the
Rev. Jacob Bailey_, by W. S. Bartlett, New York, 1853 (Collections of
the Protestant Episcopal Historical Society, vol. ii.). This work gives
a pathetic account of the hardships and privations undergone by the
exiles in Nova Scotia, as well as a graphic picture of the methods used
by the town committees in New England with those who adhered to the
cause of the king.
[178] Hawkins, _Missions_, 371–3. Ryerson, ii. 206. _Mass. Hist. Soc.
Proceedings_, Oct., 1886, p. 95. For the treatment of the loyalists
in the United States after the treaty of peace, see especially Jones,
_Hist. New York_, vol. ii. Roberts, _Hist. of New York_, ii. 449 ff.
Lecky (_Hist. England in the Eighteenth Century_, iv. 267) remarks
rather sharply: “The loyalists to a great extent sprung from and
represented the old gentry of the country. The prospect of seizing
their property had been one great motive which induced many to enter
the war. The owners of the confiscated property now grasped the helm.
New men exercised the social influence of the old families, and they
naturally dreaded the restoration of those whom they had displaced.”
[179] _Vide supra_, Note 11.
[180] _No. Am. Rev._, lix. 262 (Sabine). Lecky’s tribute to the
loyalists may be added: “There were brave and honest men in America
who were proud of the great and free empire to which they belonged,
who had no desire to shrink from the burden of maintaining it, who
remembered with gratitude the English blood that had been shed around
Quebec and Montreal, and who, with nothing to hope for from the crown,
were prepared to face the most brutal mob violence and the invectives
of a scurrilous press, to risk their fortunes, their reputations, and
sometimes even their lives, in order to avert civil war and ultimate
separation. Most of them ended their days in poverty and exile, and
as the supporters of a beaten cause history has paid but a scanty
tribute to their memory, but they comprised some of the best and ablest
men America has ever produced, and they were contending for an ideal
which was at least as worthy as that for which Washington fought. The
maintenance of one free, industrial and pacific empire, comprising
the whole English race, may have been a dream, but it was at least a
noble one.” _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_, iii. 418.
For historical notices of the loyalists in Canada, the following are
also useful: _Settlement of Upper Canada_ (1872), by William Canniff;
_Toronto of Old_ (1873), by Dr. H. Scadding; _Centennial of the
Settlement of Upper Canada by the United Empire Loyalists, 1784–1884_;
_The Celebrations at Adolphustown, Toronto, and Niagara_, Toronto,
1885.
THE END.
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation
marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left
unbalanced.
The last footnote of the book (180) on page 210 had no anchor.
Transcriber added one at the end of the last paragraph on page 198.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY ***
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