After the Restoration prompted a bloody revolt by Thomas Venner’s Fifth Monarchist group in London, Charles II cast a wary eye on New England. Meanwhile, regicides Whalley and Goffe had escaped punishment in England to make their home in Massachusetts. The fallout would lead to the end of New Haven as a colony.
Full Transcript
In January 1661, former New Englander Thomas Venner led religious and political radicals in a four-day revolt through the streets of London, leaving at least 40 people dead. At the same time, two regicides were openly living in Massachusetts, and of all the New England colonies, only Rhode Island had proclaimed Charles II king. The fallout from this series of events forced New England’s colonies to decide how they’d move forward, and in several ways solidified the course of the region’s history.
Introduction
For the past several episodes, I’ve been emphasizing the English Independent Puritan, and Scottish Presbyterian, interpretations of the Book of Revelation, and beliefs that not only was the Millennial Reign of Christ imminent, like, coming in the next couple years imminent, but that they had a role to play in making it happen. I’ve emphasized before and I’ll emphasize again that this was far from the standard belief at the time, but the further this Puritan minority had pushed England’s attempted revolution, the more they had leaned on these interpretations to justify their actions. And nowhere was this more true than in New England, where John Cotton preached with such fervency that even Oliver Cromwell looked to him for advice.
But now Cromwell was dead, the Millennium hadn’t come and in fact it seemed further away than ever. The king had been restored to the throne, and he’d brought with him a hedonistic lifestyle, and a hedonistic culture, which far surpassed anything that England had seen in at least a century.
And the question was how to process this.
One idea would be to step back and say “maybe we were wrong, and what we were doing wasn’t God’s will in the first place,” but that would be almost unbearable. There’s the pain of loss, the guilt of causing loss, the guilt of killing a king which was so nearly sacreligious at the time that even most puritans had a hard time coping with the thought … and if it hadn’t been God’s will that they do it, I mean how could the average person even live with that?
The most popular interpretation among Independent puritans was, then, the idea that England had simply not done a good enough job at submitting to God. It had been their job to pave the way for the events of the Book of Revelations, by purging sin themselves. But, its people had remained ungrateful, self-seeking and sinful, and they hadn’t done a good enough job of purging such thoughts and behaviors. God had not established England as the new Zion, because England hadn’t risen to the occasion. And in the spirit of this interpretation, New England, Bermuda and even Southwestern Scotland saw a fresh wave of witch trials in 1660 when news of the Restoration arrived.
But then, the smallest, most fringe group of radicals had another idea. They called the Restoration a “strange providence, whereat most are confounded,” and explained that it had been engineered by treachery, and that God had simply allowed it to happen in order to test the faithful, and “to punish and spew out of His mouth a lukewarm people.” Their role in bringing about the Millenium wasn’t just to purge sinfulness from England. It was actually to purge all who opposed them, first in England, and then through France, Spain, Germany, and finally Rome, directly confronting the forces of antichrist. Religiously, this meant Catholics, and anyone who veered too close to Catholicism, like Anglicans. Politically, this meant people who wanted anything other than a completely egalitarian and democratic society, with no private ownership of anything.
These people were the Fifth Monarchists, and they formed about 0.2% of England’s population to put things in perspective. They weren’t exactly a denomination so much as a movement which accepted people from all Puritan denominations, even Presbyterians in theory. In keeping with their beliefs, several of the regicides had been Fifth Monarchists, and as a group they’d supported Cromwell until he’d accepted the powers of a dictator, at which point they’d joined Henry Vane in his criticisms of the Protectorate. Starting in 1655, they’d started work to build an anti-Cromwell alliance and considered using Vane’s Healing Question, the tract for which he’d been thrown in prison, as a statement of their common platform. Vane wasn’t a Fifth Monarchist, but his beliefs aligned closely enough with those of the movement that they supported each other.
Even then, though, there was only one congregation that actually acted on these stated ideas, and they were so extreme that the rest of Fifth Monarchists kept them at arm’s length. That congregation, predictably, was in London, and it was led by Thomas Venner. Venner was a wine cooper who had migrated to New England in 1637 in the middle of the Antinomian Controversy. He’d almost certainly supported Anne Hutchinson and Henry Vane, and when Providence Island had sought settlers from New England, he’d considered moving there. In 1651, in the aftermath of the regicide, Venner had returned to an England where Independent Puritans were in charge, and he’d immediately positioned himself as the most radical of radicals. He’d participated in the Western Design, but he was best known for his leadership of the most radical congregation of Fifth Monarchists.
Descriptions of even the earliest meetings under Venner’s leadership portray a group of people so loud and tumultuous that speakers had to shout at the top of their lungs to overcome the noise of the crowd. And the crowd was loud and tumultuous because everyone in it was trying to cry down each other. The congregation’s closest friends were a nearby Baptist congregation, who agreed with their beliefs but held back a bit from the intensity of their proposed actions. In 1657, Venner’s congregation had staged a small-scale uprising, but this had been thwarted by Cromwell’s spies. They’d been imprisoned, but even Venner and the other leaders were soon released.
But with the Restoration, Venner saw the time for half-measures as being completely over, and his congregation planned a serious revolt. They printed a manifesto, but unlike previous pamphlets they’d written, this one didn’t detail the nuances of their religious and political ideals. It was a call to action. It was a statement that this was a time for war, both offensive and defensive, to protect the people from Catholicism, massacre, scandal and oppression. A Godly government should have civil liberties and ensure the rights of men, while sweeping aside taxes, tithes, excise, customs, private property, rent, and all forms of hierarchy. If Charles II wouldn’t do this, then it was the equivalent of breaking a contract, and they the people were released from all responsibility to obey him at all.
“And now, to suffer all these things, and lose our birthrights, and entail persecution, slavery, popery and idolatry to our posterities forever is grievous, but to suffer them from teh Cavaliers, an old, beaten enemy and that without striking a blow, or bleeding in the field for that which is much better than our lives (for as a Roman could say, “there is no necessity that I should live, but there is a necessity that Rome should be relieved) is the aggravation. For how did this old enemy come in? Did he beat us in the field? Did he win it with his sword? Is our cause lost? Is our God dead? No! How then? Why, by lies … by hellish plots and contrivement.”
“And for this work’s sake, we desire not to love our lives unto the death, neither will we ever (if we may speak so great a word with reverence in the fear of God) sheath our swords again until Mount Zion become the joy of the whole earth, until Rome be in ashes, and Babylon become a hissing and a curse.”
And with that outlined, Venner led a group of 50 people to St. Paul’s Cathedral at 10am on January 6, 1661. First, they entered a nearby bookshop and demanded the keys to the Cathedral. The shopkeeper refused to give them, so they simply broke through the cathedral doors and started confronting people. One man bluntly declared his loyalty to King Charles, and without hesitation, they responded that they were for King Jesus, raised a gun and shot him in the head. Everyone else backed down, and the man’s body laid where it had fallen for a day and a half. The shooting drew the attention of nearby guards, but Venner’s rebels forced them to retreat.
The Lord Mayor of London now came with the city’s militia to try to quash the rebellion, but Venner’s troops withdrew and made their way to the woods for the next couple nights, killing another constable in the process.
This was a terrifying event. Armed and organized, Venner’s troops had appeared suddenly, extremely violently, and they hadn’t been defeated. They would reemerge, but Londoners didn’t know when or where, or if they’d be the next victims. And three days later, they did reenter the city, immediately crushed the guards, and moved toward a local jail and tried to liberate its prisoners. Prince James led a detachment of cavalry to flush them out and arrest anyone suspected of sympathizing with or supporting the rebellion while the London trainband, the city’s militia, fought with the rebels at the jail. General Monck, now the Duke of Albemarle, also led his own regiment to join the fight.
The jail was the rebels’ first defeat, and it was a bloody fight for both sides, but Venner’s troops were ultimately forced to withdraw. As they did, they split into smaller groups and kept skirmishing going through the London streets. They blocked off streets, and confronted any militia, guards or soldiers who came to fight them. After a few minutes of ferocious shooting, they’d withdraw and do the same thing at another location. Again, no one could predict when or where the next fight would break out. Venner’s rebels were well armed and well armored, they knew the city, and they knew where their friends and equipment were while everyone opposing them didn’t. It was a guerilla war in the nation’s capital.
The city locked its gates, posted guards, declared a curfew and ordered citizens to board up their windows and close their doors, and the battle raged with a shocking degree of violence. As it progressed, citizens also started to fight to suppress the rebellion. When one group of ten rebels retreated into a tavern, Monck’s soldiers climbed onto the roof and smashed through tiles so they could shoot trapped rebels, while the rest of the soldiers battered down the door. Eight of the 10 were killed. Confronting another group, Monck’s troops got impatient shooting volleys back and forth and rushed Venner’s rebels to beat them with the butts of their guns. When they backed away and fired another volley, half of Venner’s troops fell, and the continued shooting forced them to leave one injured man behind. When a woman stood in the streets screaming obscenities against the king, a group of soldiers threw rocks at her, and then searched all the nearby buildings for Fifth Monarchists and their supporters. In an inn, they found a stash of the rebels’ reserve money, and arrested the 27 people who were inside the inn during their inspection.
It was slow and it was bloody, but eventually more and more rebels were killed, while fewer of those opposing them were even injured, and yet Venner’s side would not stop fighting. Plenty of them clearly intended to fight to the death, and they continued with an audacity that shocked their opponents. The last standoff saw six of Venner’s followers lock themselves into a house, refuse quarter and fight to the death.
It had been four days of terror. Forty people were dead, 20 of which were Venner’s followers. At least two were simply innocent bystanders going about their business, and finding themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nine more rebels had been injured, and Venner, himself, had been shot three times. All surviving rebels were arrested, along with dozens of other supporters. Venner and the leaders were hanged, drawn and quartered on January 19, while the other rebels were merely hanged.
Both the government and the people were deeply shaken by the rebellion, though, and beyond punishing the rebels, they wanted to make sure such a rebellion never happened again. So, the government immediately forced all English citizens to register their weapons, kicked anyone out of London who refused to take the Oath of Allegiance to the king, and banned all religious meetings outside established Churches. And then, it rounded up hundreds and even thousands of Baptists, Congregationalists and Quakers on charges of sedition. This prompted yet another attempted rebellion by that Baptist congregation that had been associated with Venner’s, but it wasn’t really well planned and was easily averted.
The Baptists and Congregationalists rushed to publish repudiations of Venner’s actions, and Quakers under George Fox went a step further. They declared themselves to be a fundamentally pacifist organization. This is actually the origin of the Quaker policy of complete pacifism, and though Quakers didn’t fully adhere to it for the rest of the century, this proclamation marked a turning point for the movement, and gave them a sustainable identity, a definition of what it meant to be a Quaker which would endure beyond the fading of the Millenarian hopes which had originally inspired the movement.
And beyond political and religious radicals, Venner’s rebellion shined a spotlight on New England. Vener was a New Englander. He’d lived in Salem and Boston for 15 years, and returned the most unrelenting of radicals. Worse, though, he wasn’t alone in this. People who had returned from New England tended on the whole to be significantly more radical than their English counterparts. Hugh Peter, Henry Vane, William Bradshaw, and then the huge number of people who had returned to fight and helped give the New Model Army its radical flare. John Eliot, so called Apostle to the Indians, had written a Fifth Monarchist-type book called The Christian Commonwealth, which had been published in London in 1654. Venner was only an addition to an already illustrious list. And, as the Restoration had happened, plenty of puritans had either returned or migrated to New England, though this time solely as a place of refuge.
To this point, of New England colonies, only Rhode Island had proclaimed Charles II king. In other words, none of the United Colonies had, and honestly it wouldn’t have been out of character for the United Colonies to collaborate, even informally, on their decisionmaking here.` From the English perspective, though, news traveled slowly and unreliably, and there was a benefit of a doubt that could reasonably be given. But, between Venner’s rebellion and news that two regicides had fled to Massachusetts and were living openly in Boston, well, it really didn’t look good, and it was time for the United Colonies to make their positions clear. Meanwhile, enemies of the United Colonies, like George Mason and Maine, were advocating for their interests against those of Massachusetts by emphasizing the colony being “a receptacle of Hugh Peter, Vane, Venner, Baker, Potter, who fly thither … for shelter, and keep us loyal subjects out of possession.”
And, before we go any further, it’s probably worth noting that Connecticut and New Haven still didn’t have charters. Even Massachusetts worried that theirs might be revoked because it afforded them so much autonomy and they were so clearly allied with the puritan cause, but the other two didn’t even have them. Connecticut had the hilariously invalid Warwick or Saybrook patent. This was essentially a piece of paper on which the Earl of Warwick had granted a little piece of land called Saybrook, which he didn’t even own, to a group of people led by Lords Saye and Brooke, without consulting anyone else in the government at all. And then the colony that grant had been used to found, Fort Saybrook, had been absorbed into Connecticut because of financial difficulties, so it wasn’t even a grant for Connecticut, just a swap of that invalid piece of paper for some financial stability.
And New Haven had even less than that. They’d never so much as pretended to try to get a patent, and they’d had a long history of border disputes with the Dutch at New Amsterdam. Charles I couldn’t have enforced anything, and Cromwell wouldn’t, but Charles II both could and might.
On receiving news of the insurrection, Connecticut and Plymouth rushed to proclaim Charles II king, and sent him a declaration of loyalty on the next ship to cross the Atlantic. In addition, Connecticut sent John Winthrop, Jr. and a couple other colony leaders to advocate for the colony. There, they would reconnect with old friends like Lord Saye and the Earl of Manchester, both of whom had helped with the Restoration, and they would try to forge a positive relationship with the new king and royalists. They would also request a new charter, issued in the king’s name, to replace the Saybrook Patent. And, while they were there, New Haven asked them to also ask for a patent for their land.
But, that left Massachusetts and New Haven which still didn’t proclaim the king. In fact, the Massachusetts General Court specifically refused to pass a bill which would have done so, even though some people pushed hard for the idea. First and foremost among these was Boston minister John Norton, but his opponents cited rumors from Barbados that the Restoration might still be reversed, and the Court decided to hold off. By November 30, it was very clear that the Restoration was here to stay, but the colonies still held off. They reached out to Manchester and Saye to ask them to intercede on Massachusetts’s behalf, but they did not recognize the king, and they openly welcomed the wo regicides, William Goffe and Edward Whalley, who had arrived from England on the very ship that had brought news of the Restoration.
There was actually a third regicide who had escaped to New England, too, but he had immediately gone undercover, calling himself John Davids. He even married and raised a family under this pseudonym, and only on his deathbed did he reveal his true identity, John Dixwell.
Whalley and Goffe, though, didn’t do this. They had immediately gone to John Endicott and announced their identities. They were regicides, fleeing possible prosecution at the hands of the new English government, relatives of Oliver Cromwell, and colonels of the Parliamentary Army. Endicott had heartily welcomed them, and they enjoyed near celebrity status in Boston and Cambridge. Even people who disapproved of the regicide could appreciate their other actions, and on the rare occasion that they were insulted, the offending parties were bound to good behavior.
Orders arrived from England to arrest Whalley and Goffe, so Endicott warned them and told them to leave the colony and go to New Haven and hide. Only after they’d left did he start the search. When a pair of English royalists named Thomas Kellond and Thomas Kirke were sent to New England to search for the regicides personally, they asked why the regicides hadn’t been arrested, when they had been explicitly told that the regicides were to be excluded from the Act of Indemnity and Oblivion pardoning past Parliamentary offenses. Endicott explained that there were rumors from Barbados that said that only seven regicides were going to be excluded from the act, and explained that he suspected they had fled to Manhattan, and from there sailed to the Netherlands. Shockingly, the royalists decided to search New England, anyway. And it wasn’t long before Massachusetts colonists who were uncomfortable with the regicide and the whole situation had told them that Whalley and Goffe seemed to have gone to New Haven.
And indeed, they had. There, they were staying with Davenport, but this time they hid. And, when the royalists seemed to be getting closer, they moved to a tiny town on the outskirts of the colony called Milford. They made a couple public appearances there, and when the royalists pursued the lead, they snuck back to Davenport’s house at night. They stayed there for a couple more months, and then to another person’s house, after which they moved to a mill, and from there into the woods, where that same person led them to a cave on the side of a hill, predictably named Providence Hill, where they’d put some furniture so they could hide comfortably. In stormy weather, they could move to a nearby house, but the cave would be their home for the next several months. The royalists continued their search, and found out that Davenport had hidden them. Eventually, local Indians showed the royalists a furnished cave, so the regicides moved back to Milford. They didn’t step foot outside the house where they were hiding for two years. After that, they loosened up a bit, and eventually they moved to Hadley, where they lived with the minister for 15 years. Whalley died there, and legend has it that two unknown people were buried in the house’s cellar.
Back to the greater problems of New England, though, the hiding of Whalley and Goffe by Massachusetts and New Haven leadership only served to underscore what Thomas Venner’s rebellion already had. New England was a potential source of sedition, especially Massachusetts and New Haven. Rumors started to spread within Massachusetts that Virginia and the Island Colonies were forbidden from trading with them, in the same way that the Commonwealth had forbidden trade with the royalist colonies. Rumors also spread that the king was preparing to send a fleet with a general governor of all the colonies, who would control them on behalf of the crown. This had been another proposed Commonwealth innovation, so New England knew it was a distinct possibility.
And with all of this, Endicott decided that if Massachusetts was to have any hope at all of continuing as a colony, it needed to proclaim the king and send him a message. So, the General Court drafted a proclamation and a letter, both cordial, subdued, formal, resigned to reality. They also banned Eliot’s Fifth Monarchist book, declaring it full of seditious principles and notions in relation to all established governments, especially that of England. They demanded Eliot publicly recant, and he did. At the same time, though, they passed an order forbidding all disorderly behavior on the occasion, and declaring that no man should presume to drink the king’s health.
As for messengers, they chose Simon Bradstreet and John Norton, instructing them to soothe all concerns about the colony and procure a new charter. They were obvious choices because they had pushed for earlier recognition of the king and Restoration, but Norton in particular was worried that in England, he’d be punished for the colony’s actions. The General Court assured him that they’d make good any damages he sustained, and the two reluctantly agreed to the mission.
They weren’t gone too long. The trip went smoother than they expected, and a few months later they returned, reporting that they’d been treated well, and bringing a gracious letter from the king confirming their charter privileges, and amnesty for all their previous errors, even harboring the regicides. The king didn’t even order a royal governor be put over the colony.
However, they would have to grant religious liberty to everyone. New England’s hanging of Mary Dyer had given the region a terrible reputation in England, and the notion that Anglicans or the Book of Common Prayer should be banned from an English colony was unacceptable. Furthermore, Massachusetts Churches must accept everyone of “good and honest lives” to the sacraments, like communion and baptism of their children, as well as allowing them to vote and run for office.
This, though it allowed Puritanism, undermined the whole foundation of New England government and society, and people were furious. They accused Norton and Bradstreet of “laying the foundation of ruin to all our liberties,” of having gotten no more benefits than expected, while allowing untold evil to be pushed on them through their own neglect and unnecessary concessions. The public reaction was so strong that Norton grew ill and withdrawn and died suddenly just a couple weeks after his return. Quakers recalled the story by saying that Norton, “by the immediate power of the Lord, was smitten, and as he was sinking down by the fireside, being under just judgment, he confessed the hand of the Lord was upon him, and so he died.” Bradstreet had the toughness and temper necessary to be one of the most controversial Massachusetts politicians throughout his early years, and he probably knew that Massachusetts could have fared a lot worse, and not much better, than they did under the royal government they’d done so much to antagonize and so little to befriend. Norton wasn’t a politician, though. He was a sensitive, somewhat timid individual who had suddenly found himself faced with the full force of Bay Colony ire, abandoned even by his friends, and he couldn’t handle it.
And for their part, the Massachusetts General Court continued to do very little to befriend the royal government, directing that all writs, processes, etc. should be in the king’s name, but only appointing a committee to look into what should be done regarding the king’s other orders. Yet again, they put off their compliance with the royal government, even with all the scrutiny and controversy that surrounded them.
New Haven, though, didn’t survive the controversies of the Restoration. They never proclaimed Charles king, and they were known to be the colony whose leaders had harbored the regicides even after receiving the arrest warrants. And, they already had no right to exist by English law. So when Winthrop, Jr. returned to New England, he returned with a charter which covered both Connecticut and New Haven land. And by the way, it was an extremely generous charter, with Connecticut being willingly given all the rights that Massachusetts had had to trick its way into getting in the 1630s. When New Haven protested that that’s not what they’d meant by also asking for a patent for New Haven land, Winthrop’s response was something along the lines of “Oh, sorry, I misunderstood, which is a shame because you were totally going to get a charter with how you’ve been behaving recently.”
As a last ditch effort to reverse this, New Haven now recognized the king and requested a reversal, but to no avail. Winthrop had been charming, cordial, easygoing and tolerant. He’d impressed the king and even Lord Clarendon. He’d used impressive connections, including chemist Robert Boyle, who sat on the new Council for Foreign Plantations, as well as fellow councilmembers Nehemiah Bourne and Thomas Middleton, in addition to Lord Saye and Sele, Thomas Temple and William Brereton, to build a base of support for his colony. Plus, he’d taken 500 pounds, which the colony had authorized to be sent to pay for the patent. England was decidedly anti-Puritan at this point in time, but it didn’t think Connecticut was all that bad. It was called playing the game, and Winthrop had done it perfectly.
This in contrast to New Haven’s actions made the decision clear. New Haven toyed with the idea of trying to join New Netherland as one last ditch attempt to avoid its destruction, but there was no love lost between it and the Dutch colony after so many years of conflict. And at the end of the day, some of its outlying towns were tired of New Haven’s rigidity regarding communion, baptism and voting, so they welcomed the change. Connecticut promised not to disturb the colony’s Churches, and to treat its citizens as equal to its own. The town of New Haven even act as a second capital city within the colony.
The Restoration had marked the end of New England’s founding era. There could be no more dreams of remaking England into a Puritan democracy, nor could they expect to see Christ return in their lifetime. Perhaps their children would see it, they decided, or their grandchildren. And, perhaps it was good enough that there was money to be made, and comfort to be enjoyed even in the wilderness. Like I said, in these years there had also been a flare-up of Quaker persecutions and witch trials. The population had divided between an orthodox minority which was, if anything, harsher and more rigid than ever, Winthrop being replaced by Endicott being a good representation of this, and a majority who decided to just go about their business and put everything behind them. And there were also pockets of radicals like Quakers and Baptists which hadn’t existed before, that they were now forced to accept. Enforced certainty had given way to inescapable uncertainty as New England entered a new era.
Next week, we’ll discuss the final transformation in Maryland going into the Restoration period, the event known as Fendall’s Rebellion.
Before we go, I would like to quickly note a couple things. First is that if you want to find transcripts for this podcast, you can visit the website at americanhistorypodcast.net. Second, if you would like to help support the show, I have two options. The first is patreon, which is a subscription-based service, and if you’d prefer to give a one-time contribution, I’ve got a buymeacoffee account as well. You can find links to those either on the website or the episode description. But as always, thanks first and foremost for listening!