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Ward, Welde and Peters
Nathaniel Ward wrote Massachusetts’s first constitution, a document which inspired future political developments in America. Thomas Welde and Hugh Peters also returned to England to seek economic benefits for the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and to agitate in favor of Parliament and spread the New England Way.
Transcript
In 1641, as England was sprinting toward Civil War, things were pretty tense in Massachusetts, too. The ministers had submitted a proposed law which would prevent the Court from convicting dissidents until after the Church had censured them, and the magistrates had refused to vote on it. Then, the ministers and deputies managed to elect anti-magistrate firebrand John Bellingham as governor, by a margin of only 6 votes, and the magistrates refused to accept the results of the election, saying some people hadn’t been allowed to vote. Then, when the results were confirmed, the Court’s first decision of the year was to repeal a standing law giving the governor an annual salary of 100 pounds. So it was just a hostile and snippy atmosphere, but things were tense for a reason. This would be the year which determined the colony’s permanent political system.
Introduction
Like we’ve discussed, there had been debates about what type of legal code the colony should adopt for years. On the whole, the magistrates felt that the legal system should develop gradually, as Common Law had. Most of the deputies on the other hand wanted a concrete list of laws and punishments. The ministers also wanted a legal code, but they preferred a code of fundamental law, similar to a constitution, which would outline the foundations of the colony’s legal system.
The first time a legal code had been proposed in Massachusetts had been in 1635 as the colony had prepared to stand off with the King, so timing stopped the debate. The next year, Henry Vane’s Court had asked John Cotton to take the lead in drafting a new body of laws. But, it was rejected, doubtless in part because of the Antinomian Controversy, but also because it was so very severe. Cotton had proposed the death penalty for 16 different crimes, some predictable, like witchcraft, murder and sexual crimes, but others for things like insulting the magistrates and breaking the Sabbath.
Even New England Puritans couldn’t get behind something so harsh, but a little over a year later, two more ministers came up with their own proposals, and one of these ministers was Nathaniel Ward of Ipswich. Ward was one of the best educated people in Massachusetts, the Cambridge-educated son of a prominent Puritan minister. He had studied law, and in fact he’d read virtually the whole body of Common Law in England. But he’d entered the clergy, and moved to Massachusetts after being dismissed from his Essex preaching position because of his Puritan views. In Massachusetts, health problems kept him from preaching much, but apart from Winthrop, he was easily the sharpest and most influential legal thinker in the colony.
Ward wrote the Body of Liberties, and it was by any measure an impressive document. Following neither the deputies’ nor the magistrates’ proposals, but addressing both groups’ concerns, Ward’s documents listed the principles the General Court must follow when making laws. It drew mostly from the Common Law, but also borrowed from the Magna Carta. So, it satisfied the Magistrates’ desire to have leeway in the General Court’s proceedings, and drew amply from the legal system they respected the most. For the deputies, it was certainly much better than nothing, and it was almost exactly the kind of document the ministers wanted.
The foundation of the Body of Liberties was, as the name suggests, the fundamental liberties of the people. The liberties the Court shouldn’t violate in its legislation and legal proceedings – unless necessary.
So, the Body of Liberties explicitly sanctioned the ministers’ classical meetings. It also said the Court must not deprive people of their life or property except in accordance with pre-existing laws. It said there would be no monopolies, except for new inventions which could profit the colony as a whole, but even then only for a short time. It said the majority of Court members must agree to dismiss a court – an unmistakable nod to the King’s problems with Parliament. It said that if parents died intestate with no male heirs, their daughters could inherit as copartners, unless the General Court decided otherwise. There would be no beating of women except in self defense. Animal cruelty was made illegal, and people were required to allow others to refresh livestock on their lands, except in places where they’d do undo damage. There was a section on the rights of servants, and there was a list of capital laws, though one much shorter and less extreme than John Cotton’s. Idolatry, witchcraft, blasphemy, murder, sexual crimes, theft of a slave, treason, and perjury with the intent of having another wrongfully executed. That was it.
Now, the document also firmly legalized slavery in the colony. People taken captive in war could be made slaves, and people sold to the English could become slaves, as well as people who sold themselves to the English as slaves. And, of course, the theft of a slave was punishable by death, and this is something that would be expanded on in the next couple years, to resemble a fugitive slave law. Colony leadership like Winthrop owned slaves after the Pequot War, the slave trade was heating up, and the decreased immigration from England had left New England with a growing labor shortage.
But at the time, and for the purposes of our discussion, the more relevant criticism of Ward’s Body of Liberties was the amount of power the document gave the General Court to override the people’s rights. It gave too much power to just a few men. The document wasn’t even published because the Court worried that these criticisms would lead to division and backlash. Pretty much every right guaranteed in the document was guaranteed, unless the General Court needed to violate it, and the General Court was the only entity which could force people to take civil oaths, but the General Court could do this, as well as overriding the inheritance rights of daughters. Children could even appeal to the Court if they were denied marriage or treated too harshly, giving the Court the final say on family matters. This flexibility helped win the Magistrates’ support of the Body of Liberties, but it didn’t go unnoticed or unchallenged. And the defense of the provisions was simple: if you disagree with how the Court handles an issue, you can vote them out, and elect someone else the next year.
Criticisms aside, though, this was a deeply important and incredibly influential document for American History. It was easily the best proposal the colony had seen, and it went on to inspire most of this country’s best-known political documents. It was a massive success for the colony, perhaps the biggest success of the colony’s early years.
Massachusetts was still facing external pressure, but now instead of the King, it was coming from the Puritan side, as English Puritans tried to set up new colonies in the Caribbean and encourage mass migration of Massachusetts settlers to their new colonies. The Earl of Warwick, for instance, encouraged New Englanders to move to Providence Island, while Lord Saye and Sele tried to convince people to relocate to his newest venture in the Bahamas, where he envisioned a Puritan government ruled by a hereditary aristocracy, along the lines of the model the Massachusetts General Court had rejected.
He was forced to change this after public backlash, though, and establish a New England style system. Saye and Sele also asked Winthrop to help relocate the Massachusetts Colony to the Bahamas, arguing that New England didn’t have good enough land for people to settle permanently. Winthrop responded that God had chosen to plant His people in New England, and that he wouldn’t be pleased to see people try to thwart that plan. To which, Saye responded that New England was only a place of temporary refuge until they had a better place to go, and now they had one, the Bahamas.
Winthrop won, of course, but it was a bitter little spat, and a few people who had been disgruntled with Massachusetts did leave. John Humphrey, especially, hadn’t liked how harshly the Opinionists had been treated during the Antinomian Controversy, and he saw in the Bahamas the potential for a more moderate Puritan colony. He had been the original deputy governor of Massachusetts, and he returned to England to help establish the Puritan Bahamas, and when there, he fought for Parliament, and in particular for Vane and the Independents.
And, speaking of people leaving, Bellingham’s second major action as governor was to enable a group of people to go back to England to advocate for Massachusetts and help influence England’s political direction. For months, Puritans had been asking both Winthrop and the ministers to send colonists back to England, but, because the colony was already conflicting with the King on the issue of the Charter and a governor Gorges, Winthrop and the magistrates wanted to avoid any unnecessary provocation. Sending people back to help agitate for Parliament felt a lot like unnecessary provocation. Plus, Endicott didn’t even think the colonists should be seeking financial aid from England, and furthermore, the colonists themselves didn’t want to send their prominent citizens – especially ministers – back to England right as the colony was really getting settled. Thomas Welde and Hugh Peters were willing to go, and were the people the mission’s advocates wanted to send, but neither Roxbury nor Salem wanted to give up their pastors for a political mission. A pastor you fit with is a personal thing, and Salem in particular had cycled through many pastors in the early years before finding Peters.
But Bellingham’s Court got behind the mission, and Bellingham, himself, was able to convince both Roxbury and Salem to let their pastors go, along with a Boston Merchant named William Hibbins. Their exact orders have been lost, but the gist of their mission was to spread the New England Way, as well as seeking economic benefits for the colony.
As the three prepared to leave, Massachusetts held a day of Thanksgiving for the events in England. The Earl of Strafford, the king’s most hated advisor, had been executed. Parliament had passed a Triennial Act, guaranteeing frequent parliaments, and Parliament had presented the King with the Grand Remonstrance listing its grievances. Churches had become more puritan, with images removed and altars put in Protestant-approved positions by government mandate, and the active persecution of Catholics had resumed.
None of the three would ever return to New England, but they managed to do almost everything they’d been sent to do. Hibbins left, and did virtually nothing to help achieve the mission’s goals, and Welde and Peters grew increasingly involved in the emerging conflict in addition to advocating for the colony. They also raised a little bit of money to send poor children to Massachusetts as apprentices and servants, which would help alleviate the labor shortages which had emerged as immigration declined. They also got donations for a proposed iron works, and for Harvard, and for future conversion of the Indians, and they placated the colony’s creditors, who had been upset because some of the colony’s debt payments were late. They also got Parliament to give Massachusetts an exemption from customs duties, allowing them to conduct trade tax-free. Parliament’s resolve also ordered all individuals doing business with Massachusetts to grant the colony similar reprieve.
Both Welde and Peters published multiple tracts about religion and the New England Way, near-propaganda pieces extolling the colony’s virtues and lauding its successes, and encouraging England to follow their lead. Welde also published a New England-translated book of Psalms, a book explaining the practices of New England Churches, and an attack on the Quakers, and wrote an introduction and conclusion to a book about the expulsion of heretics, including Antinomians, who had once infested the Churches of New England.
Welde also tried to prevent Roger Williams from getting a charter for Rhode Island. The Earl of Warwick was the head of Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Plantations, and as Roger Williams submitted an application for a patent, Thomas Welde also submitted his own claim, the dubiously legal Narragansett Patent, to give Massachusetts control of Rhode Island. Welde needed 10 signatures to block Williams’s patent, but only got 9. This was largely for personal reasons. Warwick was still annoyed that Massachusetts settlers had refused to locate to his colonies, and Henry Vane also sat on the committee, and predictably sided with Roger Williams over John Winthrop. Welde’s failure to get a patent to Rhode Island led to their mission being dissolved, but both Welde and Peters decided to stay and help the Parliamentary cause.
Both became chaplains in the Parliamentary army, and Peters in particular grew very close to Oliver Cromwell and became one of the most famous army preachers, most effective Parliamentary propagandists, and perhaps predicably, one of the strongest voices speaking against compromise of any sort with the King. He physically threatened Laud after Laud was sentenced to death, and was given some of Laud’s lands after his execution. He supported the levelers, was present at the Putney Debates, and pushed hard to execute the King, preaching sermons in favor of execution and even said to be the first to propose the idea. He walked alongside Milton at Cromwell’s funeral, and when the restoration happened, he was hanged, drawn and quartered as a regicide. Weld’s time was less dramatic, serving as an army chaplain, promoting congregationalism and opposing the Quakers, after the war he took a position preaching at a London parish, and he died there.
But, back in Massachusetts, back in 1642, Bellingham’s governorship ended in scandal. He had a friend staying in his house as a guest, and that friend had been courting a 20 year old woman. The 50 year old, widowed Bellingham had married her instead, and made the matter worse by officiating at his own wedding and refusing to step down from the General Court’s bench to face charges. It was awkward, and Winthrop was easily elected the next year, with Endicott deputy governor. And, the event lessened tensions between the ministers and magistrates. The ministers had their body of laws, their midweek sermons and their classical meetings, and they fundamentally had a lot more in common with the magistrates than the deputies. So, Bellingham’s behavior was just the push they needed to start gradually shifting their alliance away from the deputies and toward the magistrates.
Three months after Winthrop’s election, King and Parliament would finally go to war. So we’re now squarely within the English Civil War time period. While I’ll be doing a whole series on that, and want to hold off on getting into new topics until that series, I do want to take a couple of episodes to tie up loose ends, and finish discussing subjects connected to what we’ve already discussed.