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Welcome back, everyone. So, last week, we discussed how the English Civil War finally broke out. And, this week, we’ll look at some debates which emerged among Puritans in the following year. Debates which, essentially, boiled down to the fundamental question of how far the revolution should go.
Introduction
The first debate was fairly specific to New England, and it was a longstanding source of controversy. Faced with the opportunity to build their own government, the question was just how democratic to make that government. New England colonies had wholeheartedly rejected the hereditary aristocratic principles still espoused by people like Lord Saye and Sele, and the Earl of Warwick, but that was about the only thing they could all agree on. The questions involved were fundamentally the same as those which had pulled England into war: jurisdiction, arbitrary power, republican government. And the sides were best represented by the two main political entities: the magistrates, and the deputies.
The magistrates had been the colony’s original elected officials, originally serving as legislators, judges and executive combined, essentially performing all functions allowed in the Colony’s charter. But, the push for more popular participation had led to the rise of the deputies, and for the past several years, the deputies had been gradually working to chip away at magistrate power and increase their own government influence. On the whole, the magistrates tended to represent the colony’s affluent, well-bred and geographically central citizens, simply because of the way elections worked. And, in contrast, the deputies tended to represent, well, the majority of the population, including the less affluent, and those living around the outskirts of society. In fact, people who technically couldn’t vote, often voted illegally in the Deputy elections. Geographically, Essex and Norfolk Counties were so supportive of the deputies that their magistrates were not only allies but leaders of that faction. So there was quite a stark geographic and socio-economic split. And by this point in time, the conflict had caused Massachusetts Bay’s General Court to split into a bicameral legislature, with the magistrates in one house, and the deputies in the other.
In terms of ideological differences, the deputies tended to favor more concrete legal systems, with less room for judicial discretion, which they said was a form of arbitrary power. They wanted an unchanging code of laws which prescribed specific punishments for specific crimes, period, end of story. And, they didn’t want either legislative house to have veto power, also known as the negative voice, over what passed the legislature. And, on the whole, they tended to be much more populist in outlook, and they tended to favor much harsher punishments than the magistrates did. In contrast, the magistrates wanted to retain some aspects of the political structure of England. They wanted what amounted to a merit-based, non-hereditary aristocracy. They favored lenient punishments, on the whole, and they were less swayed by populist fervor, but they also opposed the notion of a concrete set of laws, instead thinking that magistrates should have the authority to decide individual cases as they saw fit, with the recognition that they were elected, could be voted out of office if they abused their power, and that they tended to be the most able people the colony could provide.
The deputies felt that the magistrates were imposing the same type of aristocratic, arbitrary power as that which the King had in England. And the magistrates thought the deputies were pushing Massachusetts toward a direct democracy, which they considered just as bad as an absolute monarchy.
There was certainly some blurring of lines, but that set of differences was a good general rule, and a principle which drove a lot of conflict. This back and forth had caused pretty much all political and legal disputes within Massachusetts over the past few years, and in these disputes the ministers formed a third political influence, who were occasionally called on to mediate between the two groups. On the whole, they were more similar to the magistrates in both background and ideology, but they had occasionally allied with the deputies, too, and they’d usually espoused a more moderate position than the magistrates.
Each New England colony had to find its own equilibrium between the forces of the deputies and the magistrates. More religiously liberal colonies like Connecticut and Rhode Island took on a more directly democratic tone, while New Haven was almost wholly dominated by its magisterial elite. But, Massachusetts was big, and influential, so as with most things, the debate there was the strongest, most heated, and most important of any colony.
So in the same month that the King had gone to war with Parliament over these issues, the debate also intensified in Massachusetts, when a man arrived in Boston from French Acadia.
This man was an agent of Charles la Tour. If you’ve been listening since the beginning, and if you have an absolutely phenomenal memory, you may recognize la Tour as being the French fur trader who violently took a Plymouth trading post at Penobscot in 1633. Well, it turns out that Isaac Allerton wasn’t the only person in the region who la Tour had clashed with. In fact, he had seriously exaggerated the extent of the land which the French government had given him the right to trade in, and that had provoked a war with another French trader named Charles d’Aulnay.
La Tour wanted help in his fight against d’Aulnay, and he did everything he could to make the alliance attractive to Massachusetts leadership. He sent a Protestant agent, and agreed to attend services in the Boston Church and read the Huguenot Bible the Bostonians gave him. Essentially, he was hinting that he might convert and be a Protestant ally against the Catholic d’Aulnay. He also suggested freedom of trade between Bostonians and Acadians, which would allow Massachusetts merchants to profit from the very lucrative French Acadian fur trade. Free trade would also help la Tour, by allowing him to trade via English ports and ships, when d’Aulnay threatened his access to French ones.
La Tour’s agent arrived between sessions of the General Court, so his proposal was dealt with by the Standing Council, an institution which was already a major bone of contention between magistrates and deputies. It was composed of only magistrates, and only those who were centrally located. The deputies very much felt that they should be a part of this, if it existed at all, and the ministers supported them on this point.
And the Standing Council’s next action would illustrate exactly why. Because, the Standing Council immediately agreed to free trade with la Tour, and essentially told the agent that they would approve all help requested if he returned with the right paperwork.
This was evidence of everything bad the Deputies thought about the Magistrates, and the Standing Council. A small group of Boston and Charlestown politicians had taken sides in a war without consulting the rest of the colony. Boston and Charlestown would profit from the war, and the trade, but they were far enough away from French Acadia to be protected from any retaliation by d’Aulnay. The people who were close to French Acadia were those in Essex and Norfolk. They wouldn’t profit, and they weren’t given a say in whether or not to participate in the war. And the General Court wouldn’t meet until the following May, so no one who opposed the war could do anything about it for the next few months. So you can see where the absolute fury lay.
But it gets worse! Legally, d’Aulnay was in the right after all. When Boston merchants went to trade with la Tour, they stopped on the way home for a meeting with d’Aulnay, and d’Aulnay showed them a copy of a French decree stating that he was the only legitimate trader in the region, and that if the English helped la Tour fight him, their goods would be subject to seizure.
When the Court met, it was in a lull in the conflict, la Tour was in France, and the Deputies didn’t manage to have anything done on the issue. One of the first things the Court did, though, in light of events in England, was to strike the King’s name from the oath of allegiance, and have the royal arms and portrait taken down.
But, the next month, la Tour arrived in Boston again, from la Rochelle, with a Huguenot crew, plus two friars who he kept out of the way. The Standing Council met him at the home of Captain Gibbons, one of the merchants who had gotten involved with him the previous year.
It invited whatever Deputies were around, but since it met in Boston, this meant that the ones who were around were again those representing that geographic area. He told them that d’Aulnay was blockading the mouth of the St. John River, but he’d slipped past the blockade and sailed to Boston for help. And they again didn’t commit to a war, but they did everything short of that. They told la Tour that he could hire men and ships on an individual basis, if he wanted. These people would essentially be mercenaries, independently hired and looking to get rich on plunder. Lots of Bostonians, including Gibbons, became deeply involved in the Acadian war. Winthrop even let la Tour’s men train and drill with the Boston militia company.
I think it’s pretty indisputable that they were way, way out of line, and the rest of the colony was quick to call them on it. Six days after the meeting, Endicott sent a letter on behalf of Essex County criticizing the actions. The letter rightfully pointed out that la Tour had shed English blood, and stolen English merchandise. He was untrustworthy, and Massachusetts should have nothing to do with him, but the Bostonians were allowing him to see their forts. He also pointed out that it was to Massachusetts advantage if the French fought each other and remained weak for as long as possible, and that if the French ever did get strong enough to be a threat to the colony, the people who would be affected first would be those in Essex and Norfolk. He accused Winthrop of putting them in danger to satisfy the greed of Boston and Charlestown merchants.
Winthrop did ask la Tour about his 1633 assault on Plymouth’s trading post, and la Tour denied that he’d intentionally wronged Allerton. La Tour agreed to submit the case to judgment and make satisfaction if he lost, and Winthrop accepted this, and that was the extent of Winthrop’s response to Endicott’s letter. On July 14, he let la Tour leave Boston with four New England ships, 16 cannons, 70 soldiers and assorted volunteers. The expedition broke d’Aulnay’s blockade, killed several of his men, seized his supplies and a pinnace with 400 moose and 400 beaver skins, ⅔ of d’Aulnay’s goods. And they brought this back to Boston.
After the expedition returned, a letter reached Winthrop signed by Richard Saltonstall, Simon Bradstreet, Samuel Symonds, Ezekiel Rogers, Nathaniel Rogers, John Norton and Nathaniel Ward – all leaders or leading ministerial allies of the Deputy faction, also criticizing the Standing Council’s decision. They said that wars should be just and necessary, and that Massachusetts had no business conducting wars against the agents of a foreign state without consulting the mother country. They also said they failed to see how God’s glory would be proclaimed by a looting expedition by greedy merchants, and again, they feared retaliation. And though their letter arrived too late to stop the expedition, they went a step further than Endicott. They published the letter, meaning it was no longer a simple, private admonishment, but a political act, one intended to stir up opposition to Winthrop’s reelection as governor, Winthrop being the leader of the Magistrate faction and Massachusetts’s single most respected citizen.
Privately, in his diary, Winthrop said that he’d acted too hastily on the la Tour issue, but this was politics, so in public, he turned around every argument the Essex and Norfolk men had made against him, and used them against his opponents. He said he’d acted within his rights, accused them of having neglected their duties by failing to consult him on the issue, and said that their public rhetoric would show that Massachusetts was divided, and thereby open it up to external threats. He said the individually hired Bostonians weren’t mercenaries, nor a war party, just an escort sent to see justice done, and that he himself had been unhappy to see how belligerently they’d acted against d’Aulnay.
His response only appealed to the most moderate of his opponents, though. Endicott, who ideologically really found himself halfway between the Deputies and Magistrates, anyway, said he was fully satisfied by Winthrop’s reports, that he was more worried about division than any battle or retaliation, and so he was doing his best to restore Winthrop’s good name. A few weeks later, Bradstreet responded, saying that he had wanted to send a conciliatory message, that he loved Winthrop and the other magistrates and didn’t want to dishonor them, but that the actions helping la Tour had angered and frightened the men in Essex. No one wanted to condemn the magistrates, but they wanted the magistrates to stop getting involved in such a dangerous war. These two were, however, the only two to back down. Bradstreet had tried to get the others to agree, but they had steadfastly refused.
Instead, the magistrates and deputies of Essex County started politically organizing to replace Winthrop as governor, and to start taking a leading role in colony affairs. The first step of this was that they would prepare their court agendas before hand. Now that Deputies constituted a full house, and served full, year-long terms rather than being elected immediately before every court, they could do this. By walking in, united in purpose and with pre-planned policies and politicians, they might start to rival the power of Winthrop and the magistrates.
So that was fight number one, and at the same time, Puritans on both sides of the Atlantic were debating the future of their religious movement. Puritanism had never been well-defined, and by now it was almost a century old. It was easy to point out things that were wrong with the Laudian Church, but now that they were potentially going to be able to dismantle it, they needed to figure out what should go in its place. This is fundamentally a dilemma every successful revolutionary movement faces, and in 1643, as a provision of John Pym’s Grand Remonstrance, it was a decision the Puritans were starting to discuss.
There were two major factions, the first advocating Presbyterianism, and the second advocating the New England Way, also known as Congregationalism. Fundamentally, the religious question mirrored the political questions of the age. What is the right balance between authority and hierarchy on the one side, and levelling democracy on the other. How do we prevent both authoritarianism, and anarchy? And as an indication of just how closely intertwined these debates were, I found a Presbyterian book which said that the three options were the Laudian Church, which was monarchical in nature, the Presbyterian Church, which was aristocratic, and the Congregational Church, which was democratic.
The majority of puritans within England were Presbyterian. These were the intellectual descendents of the Elizabethan Puritans. They were theologically Calvinist, and wanted the Anglican Church to adhere to their theology, but they didn’t want to radically modify the Church governance structure. They wanted to abolish the Bishops, but they wanted to replace them with Presbyters, which would still be connected to the government, but through Parliament. They wanted to keep the system of parish Churches, and without getting into too much detail, they didn’t want to democratize the Church structure too much.
Congregationalists, on the other hand, were a minority of English Puritans, but formed the vast majority of those abroad, especially in New England and the Netherlands. They weren’t Brownists, but they had over the years grown to adopt many Brownist ideals and practices. They existed at the halfway point between Brownism and Presbyterianism. The original English Congregationalist had been Richard Sibbes, who had converted John Cotton, and the two of them together had pretty much spread the ideology throughout the group of pastors who would later come to lead New England’s Churches. These were the people who worked as the Feofees for Impropriations, who essentially bought the ability for Puritans to take up ministerial and lecturing positions in England, until they were disbanded and moved either to Massachusetts or Rotterdam. Congregationalists wanted a much, much more democratic Church system. They had to vote on the admission of new members, and preachers had to be accepted by the Church before they could preach there. They wanted no union of Churches, which would hamper this democratic structure, though they did want Churches to associate with each other and discuss things. They recognized very little ministerial authority, and certainly no ministerial hierarchy. A Church was formed by its own covenant, among the members, and with only those who accepted the covenant and were accepted by other members able to join the Church. As you well know by now, ministers had a ton of influence, perhaps more than they did in the Presbyterian system, but they had less tangible power over Church affairs than in other Church structures.
Now, this is all very theoretical, but the theory had some very practical implications. And the first, and perhaps most important, was differing views on the administration of the Sacraments, specifically communion and baptism. In Presbyterianism, if the minister felt that you weren’t an overt and unrepentant sinner, you could get communion, and your kids could be Baptized.
That was not the case in Congregational Churches. In Congregational Churches, you had to be accepted by the Church itself as a “visible saint” before you could receive the Sacraments. It wasn’t good enough to believe and behave, you had to convince the Church that you’d had a genuine conversion experience, that you really were one of God’s elect. There’s a very tangible reason that this policy was necessary in Congregational Churches, and that’s that because these Churches were more democratic, they had to be more protective of who they allowed in to preserve the unity of the group. It’s oddly similar to the difference in social structures between a classroom and a clique.
Each side was wary of the other’s philosophy. Congregationalists felt that Presbyterians were too hierarchical, and quashed liberty with that hierarchy. Presbyterians felt that Congregationalists quashed liberty by denying Church membership and the Sacraments, and they also felt that allowing a Congregational Church system in England would make it impossible to eliminate unacceptable radicalism and heresy.
So in a way, what it came down to was that the Presbyterians believed in a larger degree of individual liberty, but not community liberty. The Congregationalists believed in community liberty, but not so much individual liberty. There were people who believed in both, but these were the true radicals, the sectarians, and they were an isolated, untrusted and disliked minority at the time. True Brownists would fall into this category, as would Antinomians, Arians, Socinians and Anabaptists. Think Roger Williams. Think Anne Hutchinson. But also think Samuel Gorton. And, not to get ahead of myself, George Fox.
But between the first two, no one quite knew which was better. And it was for that reason that the Westminster Assembly was first envisioned, and ministers from all backgrounds and of all denominations were invited to debate the merits of their respective systems. Cotton, Hooker and Davenport were all invited to attend, but declined. It was too far, meant leaving their congregations for too long at a time when many of the colony’s most respected citizens were already leaving, and they didn’t feel their presence there would truly help the Congregational cause. In fact, by not attending, they could participate in the debates as supposedly objective observers, thereby more effectively encouraging the choice of Congregationalism. Within England, this became the primary goal of Thomas Welde, while Hugh Peter had gotten more deeply involved in the military side of things, acting as an army chaplain and using his sermons to recruit people for the military.
As I’d said before, in 1643, Massachusetts was overwhelmingly Congregationalist. Of the 22,000 people who had migrated to Massachusetts, only about 4,000 were Presbyterians, and they lived predominantly in two towns: Newbury and Hingham. John Eliot, who had begun ministering to the Indians just a couple years before, was a Presbyterian. So was Nathaniel Ward, who had written out the Body of Liberties. So was Ezekiel Rogers, who had considered moving to Providence Island, and so was Thomas Lechford, who had moved back to England and published Plain Dealing, a scathing critique of New England and Congregationalism. So it was a small, but accomplished group of people. The colony’s Presbyterian leaders were Thomas Parker and James Noyse, who led a congregation in Newbury and Peter Hobart, of Hingham.
There had been no problem with this before, but as English Puritans prepared to decide between Presbyterianism and Congregationalism, New England wanted to advocate for Congregationalism. So in 1643, the rest of Massachusetts started to take a keen interest in the fact that the Newbury ministers were giving Communion to, and baptizing the babies of all but the most notorious sinners.
So, John Cotton and Thomas Hooker convened an assembly of New England ministers at Cambridge, and prepared to confront the Newbury ministers and tell them their practices were wrong. Because they were Congregationalists, they really couldn’t take concrete action, but it would be a strong, coordinated statement to try to encourage the Presbyterians to back down.
When presented with the assembly’s arguments, Parker and Noyes asked for time to consider the arguments before replying. Then, they immediately composed a letter to one of the Presbyterian leaders in the Westminster Assembly, criticizing Congregationalism and expressing the hope that the Westminster Assembly would not only choose Presbyterianism, but use that choice to influence Massachusetts in the future. “Upon mature deliberation, that the ordinary exercise of government must be in the Presbyters as not to depend on the express votes and suffrages of the people.” The letter had two effects. The first was that it actually did somewhat damage attempts to use New England as an example of successful congregationalism. And second, New Englanders worried that Parker’s letter was encouraging the English government to extend its likely-to-be Presbyterian policy to the colonies.
Now, at the Westminster Assembly, a few things were happening. First, the King had rejected the proposed assembly, at the failed Treaty of Oxford negotiations, and so the Anglican Bishops hadn’t attended the Assembly. In fact, the Assembly wasn’t even going to happen at all, until the Presbyterian Scots had demanded that England and Scotland share the same Church system as a condition of helping in the English war effort. The fact that the Anglican Bishops didn’t get involved isn’t surprising in any way, and it did allow the Puritans to really get down to the nitty gritty of their differing beliefs. At this point, Congregationalists primarily wanted to win tolerance for their group under Presbyterian leadership, but that itself was divisive. Like I said, 17th Century, one country, one Church.
The Presbyterians had the numerical majority, and they immediately moved to associate the Congregationalists with the radicals. They said Congregationalism was totally unable to root out radicalism, and even outright heresy, and they referred to the joint group of Congregationalists and Radicals as Independents. Congregationalists were uncomfortable with this alliance, but it actually did boost their numbers a bit. And, it allowed Henry Vane to act as one of their leaders, along with Oliver St. John, and those were two prestigious and respected people. The problem was, now, the Independents could rival the Presbyterians somewhat, but, there was a deep division among the Independents themselves. There were Independents swearing they could root out radicals and heretics as well as the Presbyterians could, but they were allied with Independents who were, in fact, radicals and heretics.
Now, at the end of the day, in 1643, the Independents really didn’t have a chance for their system to be adopted. On September 25, the Solemn League and Covenant was adopted, ensuring the victory of Presbyterianism which the Scots had demanded. But, the Assembly did unite the Independents, and prompted a continuing flurry of debates and rhetoric. If anything, it had shown the Independent side to be much stronger than anyone could previously have imagined.
So, at the end of 1643, the dynamics and disputes which would characterize the Puritan movement in both America and England for the next few years were fully in motion. The fundamental question underlying all of these dynamics was just how far the revolution should go. And in Massachusetts, the answer was considerably farther than it was in England.
And, there was another development in motion. The War had resulted in a decline in merchant activity from England. And in December 1643, New England sent out a convoy of five ships to fill the gap, and profit where there hadn’t been a market before. They started selling timber, produce, livestock and fish to other colonies, and trading with the Dutch, French and Portuguese to get the products they couldn’t produce. It was the beginning of the trade patterns which would continue until the American Revolutionary War. And, three of the five ships had been built in New England.
And there’s one other thing I’ll mention, simply because, well, it seems important and I don’t know where else to put this. Miantonomo’s execution had resulted in war between the Mohegans and Narragansetts, and Connecticut and New Haven had sent men and supplies to help Uncas. Plymouth and Massachusetts didn’t get involved or help pay for the expedition, but they approved. This conflict spilled over into New Netherland, resulting in a string of attacks on European settlements there, and it was in one of these that Anne Hutchinson and the majority of her family were killed.
Next week, we’ll go South, and see how the other colonies were faring with the outbreak of war.