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Politics, economics and the trial of a wealthy merchant

Massachusetts Bay still hadn’t finalized its political and economic path, but in 1639 the trial of Robert Keayne for economic oppression helped it develop its answers to remaining questions.  Keayne had been accused of overcharging for nails, and ministers, magistrates and deputies debated his fate.

News from England

King Charles had demanded the charter again, and declared Gorges governor of the colony, but in 1640, the Bishops’ Wars, the calling of a new Parliament, and the imprisonment of Laud had dramatically changed England’s political situation.  And with the change, the flow of English immigrants to New England stopped.  For the next 200 years, more people would leave the region than move there.

Transcript

Between 1636 and 1637, New England puritans had become internally united in a way they weren’t before, they’d solidified their regional dominance, and gained strength and confidence.  And the transformation was tested before it was even complete.

Introduction

Throughout this period, large fleets of ships had continued to come to New England, but in spring of 1637, the king issued an order hindering Puritans from going to New England, because he said it seemed their only real goal was to live without the reach of authority.  Officials at the ports were not to allow settlers to go without his express permission, and they must sign an oath of allegiance to both the Church and Crown of England.   Then, in June, after the Mystic raid and after Winthrop’s re-election as Massachusetts governor, another massive fleet came.  In addition to 3,000 people, it brought a letter from Archbishop Laud to a man named Burdet, and an order from the King that the colony send back its charter immediately.  Burdet had been living in Pascataqua and watching the developments in Massachusetts.  He’d told the archbhishop that he was delaying his return to England because he wanted to keep monitoring the colony, but that it seemed to him that the colonists were trying to achieve sovereignty.  Simply governing themselves according to Puritan ideals didn’t seem to be enough for them.  He’d even reported that the court was willing to declare perjury and treason if anyone spoke of appeals to the King, and while I’m not sure if that’s true, there were a couple people who had or would threaten to appeal to the king, and those appeals were withdrawn within 24 hours each time.

In response to these reports, Laud had pushed King Charles to resume his attempts to revoke the charter.  So, they sent an order to New England, telling the governor, or whoever had the patent, to send it back to London on that fleet of ships.  No more delays.  If they refused, the council would push the King to turn Massachusetts into a crown colony.

In 1635, when their charter was threatened, the colonists had been unsure of what to do.  They’d delayed, discussed, and tried to keep a low profile, hoping the problem would just go away.  In 1637 when the threat was resumed, their response could be summed up in three words.  You wouldn’t dare.

In response to the King’s message, Winthrop drew up a Humble Petition, which was signed by the general court.  In the Petition, the colonists stated their refusal to send back the charter, saying they’d come over with their families and estates, with the encouragement of the king, in addition, they said their efforts had greatly enlarged the King’s dominions, but if their charter were removed, they’d leave.  They’d either go to other colonies, or move back home, and they’d let New England fall into the hands of the French or Dutch.  Watching how their colonies had crumbled, other Englishmen would be dissuaded from colonizing in the future, and English growth would be crippled while the Dutch and French grew.  Or, maybe they’d just form their own, independent government, and encourage other colonies to do the same.  Either way, the king would lose, so he might as well just let them live in peace.

As King Charles showed repeatedly through his life, though, he was deeply stubborn, and not someone who was particularly swayed by threats.  The King did dare.  When he received the petition, he nullified the charter and declared Gorges the royal governor of the Colony, but nothing changed right away.

Colonists continued to flood into New England and spread.  And, in 1638 more Puritan settlements were created in New England, and Long Island, though they did have to adjust their settlement location after Dutch backlash.  The same officials were elected again, Harvard opened its doors, and the population as a whole started to work on making the colony a comfortable place to be.  Connecticut continued to worry about Pequot survivors, even considering sending a military expedition to fight a tribe which had given refuge to Pequot warriors.

Pascataqua also submitted itself to Massachusetts government.  Their own government was falling apart, so they negotiated an agreement where they’d give up their government, and enjoy all their same rights and the same rights and political representation as other citizens of Massachusetts.  And, after this, Massachusetts surveyed its new lands and claimed the entirety of New Hampshire.  And, it was after this that the legal dispute with Exeter that I mentioned in the Antinomian Controversy episode happened.

But, like I said, though things were quieter, they weren’t completely conflict-free, and the most notable court case of 1639 would hone the colony’s economic and political path.  It involved a merchant named Robert Keayne, who was accused of overcharging for nails.

But, before we get into the case, I’d like to set the stage by discussing the political and economic context which it occurred in, and which, in many ways, fueled it.

Politically, the issue regarded the balance of power among the colony’s officials.  Through the series of chaotic disputes which had characterized the early days of the colony, a system of separation of powers had emerged.  First, there were the magistrates, the original government of the colony.  They were a group of officials elected by the colony as a whole, who in turn elected the colony’s governor and deputy governor.  But then, in 1634, the colony’s citizens had demanded more popular representation, and they’d earned the right for each town to send two elected officials deputized to represent the town’s will to join the General Court.  These, were rather appropriately called deputies.  The deputies outnumbered the magistrates, but the magistrates had declared veto power, known as a “negative voice.”  And, the magistrates had also created a “Standing Council,” a group of people who would have magistrate rank for life.  And then, in the middle of all this were the ministers, who had virtually no official power, and couldn’t hold elected office, but who controlled who earned full voting rights, and who influenced the populace more than anyone.  Their midweek sermons were the only public political speech allowed in the colony, and were widely attended.

It had been an evolving system, and it was kind of messy, but it worked.  It was a unicameral system, in which the deputies and magistrates could veto each other.  And, the two groups of people were quite different.  Because they were elected by only the people who traveled to the annual election, Magistrates were higher brow, more intellectual, and started to fill the role of the colony’s aristocracy.  By contrast, the deputies, who were elected in each town, were more populist.  The deputies wanted a body of laws to guide judicial decisions, and the magistrates didn’t.  They believed in a gradually evolving system of common law.  The magistrates wanted things like the Standing Council, and Negative Voice, and the deputies disagreed.  Those things made the colony less democratic, and decreased their own influence as the group with the majority of members.  In a unicameral system, the magistrates could outtalk the deputies almost every time, and the magistrates usually got what they wanted.

But, the spats had been short-lived and easily resolved, and the members of the General Court found themselves on the same side on the big issues, most notably the Antinomian Controversy.  And, in fact, the Antinomian Controversy had smoothed relations between the two, because the magistrates and deputies had taken the lead in purging the colony at a time when the ministers were still treating the Opinionists with a certain level of reserve and leniency.

It was by no means a completed system, though.  There were still questions to answer, and there were alliances among the three groups, magistrates, deputies and ministers, as they tried to maximize their power, and achieve their political goals.

So, first the magistrates and deputies were allied.  They’d allied to purge the Opinionists, and they also allied to unsuccessfully push the ministers to preach against excess of apparel in their sermons.  In this amicable era, the magistrates had even allowed some of the deputies’ proposed laws to pass.  But they still resisted a comprehensive body of laws, despite growing popular pressure, and the support of both ministers and deputies for such an idea.

But then, the magistrates had passed an order requesting a meeting to discuss the ministers’ midweek sermons.  They were extremely political, the only allowed public political speech in the colony, and they were also extremely popular.  It’s easy to imagine that the ministers were using these speeches to push for a Body of Laws, as the ministers had already compiled two potential versions of a Body of Laws.  Winthrop also complained that poorer people used the sermons to get out of doing work, and thus they were damaging the colony’s economy.  So, the magistrates wanted to address the issue.  They passed an order asking for a meeting with the ministers to address the issue.  The ministers were deeply offended, and refused to attend the meeting.  The magistrates explained they were just requesting a meeting, nothing offensive, nothing to regulate or otherwise control or insult them, they just wanted a meeting to discuss church meetings.  But, in their explanations, they also hinted that they may want to discuss the ministers’ “classical meetings,” which many people saw as the ministers moving toward Presbyterianism.  And after the magistrates’ explanation, the ministers were even less impressed with the idea.  They refused to attend the meeting, and started to look for ways to limit magisterial power.

So, the magistrates and the ministers entered a feud.  Fundamentally, they were the groups with more in common than either had with the deputies, but in response to the magistrates’ insult, the ministers decided to curb their power.  The magistrates were on the verge of getting far too much power for comfort, and if they got that power, they’d shown they might go against the midweek sermons.  Their first action was to campaign hard against Winthrop’s reelection as governor, but they were unsuccessful.  So the ministers started seeking an alliance with the deputies, and this worked for the deputies because it was a great way for them to permanently increase their own influence.  So, the deputies started to split away from the magistrates and ally with the ministers.

So, that was the political situation, now for the economic.

Like many people of the time, but perhaps more than most, Puritans believed in largely communal economic systems.  The General Court and local authorities chose which industries to pursue and develop, and they encouraged specific activities by granting free land, tax exemptions and exclusive rights to people willing to invest in these chosen activities.  They also built communities to foster economic and moral ideals.  This was a big part of creating places like Boston Common.  Communities would designate common ground to substitute for the amassing of large, privately owned tracts of land.  These large tracts of land would lead to an overly rural society, which meant less social cohesion, and less ability to enforce laws.  And, when people formed new communities, it was as groups, not individuals.

Technically, economic “oppression” was when either a buyer or a seller took advantage of the other’s ignorance or necessity.  In reality, a large part of the accusation had to do with established prices and profit margins. The concept of “just” prices had been passed down from Medieval ideas, which themselves had their roots in Aristotelian logic, but of course the Puritans emphasized these ideas in a way that others didn’t.  There was an accepted price margin on goods sold in the colony, a margin of 10-30 percent, and deviation from that was subject to scrutiny.  In fact, during the first 15 years of the colony’s existence, the General Court heard 50 cases regarding violations of these rules, and local town courts heard even more.  And, the ministers took the issue so seriously that economic activity accounted for 8 of 40 total excommunications during the first 25 years of the colony’s existence.  A man in dealing, wrote one Puritan divine, should as readily design his neighbor’s good, profit and advantage as his own.  The man who sells commodity as dear or for as much money always as he can, seeks himself, and himself only.

These humble economic notions conflicted with the realities of life in a colony whose economic destiny was trade, though, and the gap had been widening.  Life in New England didn’t really allow for simple “10% profit” calculations.  There were costs and risks associated with buying supplies in England and shipping them across the Atlantic, or in trading with colonies in the Chesapeake and Caribbean.  It wasn’t a secure or reliable place to conduct business.  But as much as there was risk involved, there was also reward.  New England’s pre-industrial economy was fueled by trade, and the importance of trade was becoming clear in 1639.  If the ministers were going to ensure trade was conducted according to their moral standards, they would need to make a statement on the issue and get the government on their side sooner rather than later.  It would be easier to guide development than correct it.

That’s why, in November 1639, the ministers became the driving force in an attempt to address the colony’s economic activity.  In particular, the pastor of Rowley, named Ezekiel Rogers, wrote to Winthrop on November 3, and said that economic oppression was becoming a major issue in the colony.  He wanted the General Court to make an example of a few particularly notorious oppressors.

Rogers wrote to inform Winthrop that the elders thought some of the court were very sharp in dealing with Mr. Hawthorne, the speaker of the deputies.  It was the issue of Keayne, most likely, that prompted Hawthorne to consult with the ministers.

And, two days after he sent his letter, he got his wish.  As one of the richest men in the colony, Robert Keayne was a perfect target.

Keayne had been trained as a tailor, but traded and invested his way to fabulous wealth in the 1610s.  He’d used some of that wealth to invest in both Pilgrim and Puritan migration.  He’d been a member of London’s Honorable Artillery Company, as well as the Merchant Tailors’ Company, and then, he had moved to Boston in 1635.  There, he’d set up a shop and tailor business, and contributed significantly to the colony’s growth.  He’d helped fund public projects, including the building of the battlement on Fort Hill as the standoff with the King had happened, and he’d helped establish the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts, that Boston militia, and been one of few Bostonians to stand with John Wilson in the Antinomian Controversy.

But, a Boston citizen accused Keayne of overcharging for nails.  Specifically, he’d sold sixpenny nails for 10 pence a pound.  That seemed to give him a shocking 40% profit, which was outside the 10-30% bounds.  It sounded a lot like oppression.  But, when Keayne gave his side of the story, he said the man who had brought the lawsuit had originally bought sixpenny nails using credit, for 8 pence a pound, but then exchanged them for eightpenny nails at 10 pence a pound, which was a profit margin of only 20% in each case, which was normal.  In addition, Keayne said the man had bought the nails on credit, never paid the debt, and had only brought the suit to the authorities after Keayne had pressed for payment.

His defense was pretty compelling, and all documented, making it easy to prove, but when it looked like he would win the case, a large group of townspeople came forward with similar accusations.  He explained that his prices reflected the increased risk of buying goods in England and transporting them across the Atlantic.  At the end of the day, he only ever made a 20% profit.  That wasn’t as compelling.  Passing your own problems, mistakes, or punishments from God onto your customer wasn’t ethical.  So, in light of the new testimony and unsatisfactory answers, the magistrates found him guilty and the coiurt debated his sentence.  The deputies, who were then allied with the ministers, wanted to fine Keayne a huge amount, whereas Winthrop and the magistrates wanted to be lenient.  The compromise was to fine him 200 pounds, and to give the next General Court the option to dismiss half of the fine.

Then, Church elders met to discuss the possibility of ecclesiastical reproach.  They did decide not to excommunicate Keayne, but they formally admonished him, and he was censured.  The day after the Church delivered its rebuke, Cotton delivered a sermon specifically discussing the wrongful economic behavior of merchants.  Among the accusations, Cotton said that merchants tried to sell for as high a price as possible, and buy for as low a price as possible, that they tried to raise their prices to recoup losses, and that they tried to pass on the cost to customers if they made mistakes, for instance, if they bought for too high a price, and finally, he said they tried to take advantage of their own abilities and others’ ignorance.  Cotton believed in centralized economic control even more strongly than other Puritans, and the target of his sermon was unmistakable.

Keayne was disappointed that that the Church admonished him based on rumors about his behavior, and without any proof.  Winthrop wrote years later that Keayne had had a reputation in London for charging excessively, and that he’d been admonished by friends and family over the years, but refused to repent, and we can only imagine that these were some of the rumors Keayne was complaining about.  The next May, though, Keayne repented, asked the Church for forgiveness, and the Church lifted its censure.

At the next court of elections, the deputies and ministers were able to use their newly solidified alliance to oust Winthrop and replace him with Thomas Dudley, who had always tended to side with the deputies, and made antimagisterial leader Richard Bellingham deputy governor.  The magistrates, at first, refused to accept the results of the election, but after the ministers sent a delegation to explain that they still deeply respected Winthrop, and had only gone against him to prevent a hereditary office from forming, the conflict dissipated, and the new Court could get down to business.  The good news for Keayne was that he and Dudley were related by marriage, and Dudley himself had been accused of “oppression” in the early 1630s when he tried to corner the market on corn.  So, though he’d been elected by the people who’d pushed to punish Keayne the most severely, Dudley was extremely sympathetic, and reduced Keayne’s fine to 80 pounds without even bringing the issue to a vote.  The deputies had wanted Keayne to pay the full 200 pound fine, and were furious that Dudley hadn’t even bothered to consult with them, so they charged Dudley with “breach of order.”  At first, Dudley scoffed and said he wouldn’t suffer such things, but the next day he explained his behavior, and crisis was averted.

So, Keayne’s reputation was tarnished, but he was still one of Boston’s richest and most philanthropic residents.  His troubles were over for the time being, and he could go back to business, and remain an active member of the Boston community.

And, as for the ministers and deputies, though they were disappointed with Dudley on the Keayne issue, they found his election to be a victory for their side.  He expedited the ratification of the “Body of Liberties” which had first been proposed by Ipswich pastor Nathaniel Ward in 1638, and he repealed the magistrates’ order about midweek lectures.

And with the last pieces rapidly falling into place, the Puritans had essentially completed their New England Model, their City on a Hill.  Their system was complete.  Their experiment was a success.  And just a few months later, the last two fishing vessels of the season brought a flood of news from England.  The king had gone to war in Scotland, a conflict known as the Bishops’ Wars, and that had forced him to call the first Parliament in 11 years.  Laud had been imprisoned, and almost overnight, England’s political situation had reversed itself.  And, with the political reversal in England, immigration to New England also stopped, again almost overnight.  From 1640 on, for the next 200 years, more people would leave New England than move there.  The Great Migration had ended.  New England had taken its permanent form.