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Laud’s investigation
When Archbishop Laud investigated the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s activities, he quickly discovered its charter had been moved to America. Alarmed by the quantity and type of people moving to New England, he moved quickly to take over. A permanent commission was created, with final say over the colony’s activities, and with Laud at its head.
This seriously jeopardized the colony’s mission, to create a Puritan model society. The only hope of survival was for the Bay Colony to build quietly until the King’s attention was diverted elsewhere. There were, however, members of the colony who didn’t want to appease heresy at any cost, and it was at this time that John Endicott cut the St. George Cross from Salem’s royal ensign.
Rivalry and expansion
By 1634, there were multiple groups vying for control of New England. Puritans, Pilgrims, French and Dutch were all trying to carve out place for their settlers. Puritans were the most numerous, Pilgrims had been building a series of trading posts for years, and French and Dutch came with their own charters (sometimes conflicting, and others confirmed by the English ambassador). Disputes in the wilderness could turn violent quickly, but many discussions remained peaceful.
Transcript
Thomas Morton’s letter detailing developments in England was exaggerated – but his threats were far from idle. Pushed by Gorges and Laud, King Charles had begun to push back against the colony – hard, and events of 1634 occurred against a background of increasing fear of royal intrusion. This episode, we’ll discuss that issue, and a series of land disputes with the French, Dutch and Plymouth settlers as Massachusetts tried to expand its boundaries to support its growing population.
Introduction
As 1634 began, Laud was at the head of a new committee to investigate the colony’s activities. He was alarmed by the sharp increase of Puritan emigrants, and another member of the committee who was based in Suffolk expressed the concern that the exodus would result in an increase in Puritan thought in England, as well as damage to English trade – trade being the strongest basis of the country’s economy – because its own citizens would be competing against it.
The new committee wasn’t just examining New England, though that was its emphasis. It would also investigate the activities of the rest of England’s colonies. Massachusetts Bay was only one destination of the mass Puritan exodus, and by the end of the decade only a quarter of émigrés had ended up there. Some went to Virginia, others to Maryland – a Catholic colony founded the year before with a high level religious tolerance – others to the Low Countries, and many, many others to the Caribbean. They helped found Barbados and Antigua, and had created another extremely politically motivated colony on Providence Island. Apart from Roanoke, Providence Island is easily the most important failed colony in British history, and we’ll do a series on it in a couple months. That said, for the time being, the Privy Council’s concerns rested squarely on Massachusetts – and Massachusetts’ biggest threat came from London.
In February, as the committee worked, the Privy Council stopped 12 ships bound for New England, and the council demanded that the shipmasters appear before Laud’s committee to give an account of the passengers and provisions on each ship. Then, they ordered Cradock to produce the Charter before the ships would be released. Cradock had no choice. He told the council he didn’t have the document, because it had been transported to New England.
A week later, the ships were released, but with an order. Because the board sees the frequency and quantity of people leaving for New England, and because those people are known to be hostile to both the civil and ecclesiastical government in England, the king needed to act, and he needed the charter. But, because the ships were already in the Thames, ready to set sail, stopping them would be too dramatic and damaging an action. So, the ships should go, but Cradock must bring the charter back.
The biggest change that resulted from Laud’s investigation, though, was the creation of a permanent Commission for Regulating Plantations, with Laud at its head. This new Commission would have the authority to regulate all plantations, call in all patents, make laws, raise tithes, remove and punish governors, hear legal cases and inflict all punishments. And, if 5 or more commissioners found that the colonists had wrongfully obtained their land, or that they were planning rebellion against England, or were on the verge of full separation from England, the commission could require the colonists to disperse – either to other colonies or back to England.
In addition, the commission ordered the Lord Warden of the East Anglian and Kentish port towns, known as the “cinque ports” and “haven ports,” to help slow the excessive and disorderly emigration.
It was essentially a worst-case scenario.
The king was preparing to take over, there could be no doubt. Morton, Charles and Laud had all essentially said so. They were ordered to return the charter, but doing so most likely meant having the charter revoked. Even if it didn’t, it meant the end of the autonomy the colony had been operating under, and increased scrutiny by the Crown. The colony’s biggest enemies, Laud and likely Gorges, would be the people with the final say over the colony’s affairs, and there would be no more political experimentation, no more meticulous selection of colonists, no more separation from Church of England rituals …
And worst of all, no more Model Society. New England would become like any other English colony, a hodge-podge of varying beliefs and identities, with Puritans perhaps guiding it, but no longer crafting it into a model for all of protestant Europe to follow. They would most likely be able to live in peace, but the vision would be lost.
And in Massachusetts, they needed to decide how to react to this news. They could still minimize the damage, and the question was how to minimize the damage while continuing to work toward the colony’s goals.
The very thing that made the king so quick to scrutinize a Puritan model society was the colony’s best hope of doing this. The political climate in England and Scotland was still very tense, and the King’s attention couldn’t remain on an American colony for long, especially if the colony remained relatively quiet.
They couldn’t afford to lose the charter, so they stalled. They responded to Cradock, saying that the document could only be released by a vote of the colony’s General Court. And, the next General Court simply refused to consider the issue. That put the issue on the backburner for a few months and allowed the colony to deal with its other pressing issues, namely, a massive influx of people. And it also gives us a chance to discuss the second major thing that was going on in 1634, expansion to accommodate those people.
They had to start looking for more places to settle, and this would bring them into conflict with other groups of the region, including Plymouth.
Up in Maine, the Pilgrims actually had a grant from the Grant Patentees of New England, which granted them the exclusive right to trade at Kennebec, and Kennebec was one of their most profitable trading posts – meaning it was one of the ones helping most to pay off the colony’s debt. Interestingly, they seem to also have been friends with some Jesuit missionaries who were evangelizing in the region. There, the confrontation with Puritan competitors turned violent.
In spring, one of Wiggins’ Piscataqua men, named John Hocking sailed to Kennebec in a pinnace belonging to Lords Saye and Brooke, and two of Plymouth’s magistrates told him to stop, and he refused. Then, he moved his ship to a location where he could cut off Plymouth’s trading vessels, and anchored it. John Howland took a small group to meet Hocking and reiterate their demands, and when he again refused, Howland ordered one of his men to cut Hocking’s anchor cables. After they’d cut one, Hocking drew a gun and said he’d kill whoever cut the other. Howland jumped to the rail of Hocking’s boat, saying “They’re only obeying my orders, so shoot me instead of them!” One of the Plymouth men cut it anyway, and Hocking did kill him. Then, another Plymouth man shot and killed Hocking. We don’t know who shot him – the Pilgrims protected his identity years after the altercation.
When news of the altercation reached Boston, Dudley and Winthrop wrote to Lords Saye and Brook to ask what to do, and the Lords replied that they’d like to see some of the Massachusetts magistrates join Captain Wiggin to see justice done. The puritans at Pascataqua were allies of the Massachusetts settlers, and Saye and Brooke who owned the colony were Puritan leaders back in England. They were inclined to side with Pascataqua anyway, so they obeyed Saye and Brooke.
When Alden went to Boston on a totally unrelated trip, officials arrested Alden, who was the highest-ranking Plymouth official present at Kennebec, and put him in jail while Massachusetts wrote to Plymouth and asked whether the colony was willing to punish the man who killed Hocking. Standish went to Boston to demand Alden’s release, but Massachusetts’s magistrates refused and insisted on a hearing of the full case.
Bradford and Winslow then went to Boston with their pastor, Ralph Smith, to put forward their case and discuss their trading rights with Massachusetts pastors Cotton and Wilson. Pascataqua didn’t send any representatives, and Massachusetts represented them. Bradford and Winslow noted that they had a grant for exclusive trading privileges, and they’d been using it. Kennebec was one of their most profitable posts, and it had even been the one where they’d learned to use wampum. They noted that Hocking had killed the first man, and he could have killed more if their man hadn’t killed him.
In light of the recent altercation, they wanted to know if their rights would be recognized, and if Massachusetts would recognize their right to defend those rights, including to the death. They acknowledged they had been guilty of breaking the 6th Commandment, and that they’d hazarded another man’s life for their rights and material wellbeing, which they would be careful not to do in the future, and that their man had been reprimanded, but they emphasized that they were far from the only wrong ones in the situation.
It was pretty clear that Plymouth owned Kennebec, though, and they could strongly argue that the shooting was self defense, so Alden was released and Plymouth’s rights were recognized. They continued using the post until 1661.
The Plymouth Settlers soon found themselves in another dispute over a trading post, but the next time they were looking to Massachusetts for help. Isaac Allerton was in charge of the post at Penobscot, but a group of French traders took it over, killing two of the five men Allerton had left there when they resisted, and kidnapping the rest, as well as taking all the goods at the post when he arrived. Allerton took a pinnace to demand the goods and his men, but the French Leader claimed the goods as his lawful prize, saying he had authority from the King of France allowing him to attack and dispossess any Englishmen trading east of Pemaquid. Allerton asked to see his commission, and the French leader responded that his sword was his commission when he had strength to overcome.
Plymouth hired a ship called the Hope of Ipswich to push the French out, offering its captain, Richard Girling, 200 pounds if he succeeded. The French had already fortified the post, and Girling didn’t have enough men or ammunition to displace them, so he went to Boston to ask for help. The court there asked Plymouth to send representatives to come discuss the issue, and when Thomas Prence and Miles Standish arrived, they announced that they’d help Plymouth as friends, but that they wouldn’t treat the post as an issue of the common good. After Standish and Prence left, they decided not to give the men or supplies at all, and Girling was forced to return to Plymouth to say the fort couldn’t be recovered.
The Puritans later reached out to the French at Penobscot and asked if they intended to expand beyond Pemaquid, and the French responded that the English ambassador had set Pemaquid as the limit of peaceful French expansion in New England. The issue had been settled by an international treaty, and they wouldn’t go beyond Pemaquid.
The other area the Massachusetts settlers were interested in expanding to was Long Island, where the Earl of Stirling had an English patent. When they went, though, the Dutch Governor of the Hudson River Plantation, Gaulter Van Twilly, invited them to a meeting, where he told them the land was rightfully his. They showed him their commission, and he showed them his. The matter would have to be settled between the English King and the Dutch Lords. The King wasn’t likely to enter diplomatic negotiations for that, so the settlers gave up and went back home.
Maine was useful for trade, and while Long Island had been attractive, it was a no-go, but the real gem of the area was Connecticut – the best trading location and lots of fertile land. That was the place Massachusetts had its eye on.
They started with the Connecticut River, and Samuel Hall and John Oldham took the lead in exploration. The Plymouth settlers had learned about the Connecticut area from the Dutch, and they’d been quietly building up a trading post there without announcing it to the Bay Colony inhabitants. They knew they didn’t have official right to the land, and they wouldn’t fight people with contesting claims, but their economy had finally been stabilized by trade, and they wanted to maintain a significant presence in the region, and Connecticut was in a particularly good location to conduct trade both locally, and with places like Virginia and the Caribbean. So they’d bought it from the Indians, and hoped they could assert some claim over it when the time came.
The inhabitants of Newtown and Watertown were particularly interested. They were running out of space, and more importantly Newtown’s preacher was starting to conflict strongly with Boston’s John Cotton, especially on issues of limiting suffrage. They wanted some distance separating them from Cotton’s influence. In fall 1634, they petitioned for the right to move to Connecticut, and the issue became the subject of a multi-day debate. Newtown residents argued that they were running out of space for their population, and the land around the river was fertile enough that it would soon be claimed by someone – either Dutch or English. So, by planting they’d also help reserve the country for the Puritans. Opponents of the move argued that it was important that the colony remained one body seeking the welfare of the whole, and that as weak as they were when united, they’d be in danger if they split up – discouraging future colonists, and leaving Newtown residents vulnerable to threats from the Dutch, Indians and King alike. The Pequots owned the Connecticut area, and there had been no meetings with the tribe since Stone’s murder. If they wanted to move, it would be best if they simply joined a larger Massachusetts town. Dudley was one of six people to vote in favor of the Newtown residents’ move, but Winthrop and Cotton led a much stronger opposition, and Newtown wasn’t allowed to move.
Leadership did start working to smooth relations with the Pequots, though. It was a prerequisite to safe expansion.
So, in late October, they met with the Pequots to discuss the murder of Captain Stone and negotiate peace and trade. The Pequots were equally eager for peace, as the Puritans were far too numerous and strong to afford as an enemy. They already had tense relations with the Dutch, and were facing pressure from other Native tribes. So, they sent ambassadors to meet.
First, the Puritans demanded justice for Stone’s murder, specifically, that the Pequots kill the people responsible for the murder as a prerequisite to negotiations. According to the Puritan version of events, which they got from Friendly Indians, the Pequots had assassinated the captain and his crew while they were sleeping, and then plundered and burned his ship.
The Pequots responded that Stone’s murder had been in response to his kidnapping of two braves who had boarded his ship to trade peacefully. They said the sachem responsible for the murder had been killed in a conflict with the Dutch, and that all but two of the remaining murderers had died in the recent smallpox epidemic – one which had also hit residents of Plymouth and Massachusetts. The tribe agreed to hand over those two, as well as granting the Puritans as much of the Connecticut Valley as they wanted, plus paying them 400 fathoms of wampum, 40 beaver and 30 otter skins. Plus, they’d open a permanent trade, and asked for a military alliance. The Puritans accepted their explanation and their offer, minus the military alliance, and signed a treaty in November. The terms were fantastic, and their account of Stone’s death didn’t seem too far fetched. The next spring, though, Oldham took his trading ship to Pequot territory, and returned very cynical about the possibility of fair and honest trade with the tribe. The remaining murderers were never surrendered, and the Pequots only paid part of what they’d offered for peace. A disappointing result, perhaps, but peace was the most important thing.
As 1634 came to a close, the main threat to the colony remained, though, and that was the potential revoking of the Charter and imposition of a governor from England. They’d already been concerned about the violent confrontation in Kennebec, but that seemed to blow over. The real problem was, Massachusetts was now a colony populated by thousands of people who had left England because of strongly held beliefs, but who didn’t fully agree with each other. And one of the biggest questions was how much they should compromise to preserve the safety of the colony. This had been a question in Massachusetts since Day 1, and tensions with the King galvanized both sides. Was making a few compromises worth it for the long-term benefit of a colony that could help Protestantism everywhere? Or was compromising with heretics fundamentally wrong and unacceptable? At the latter group’s head was Roger Williams.
Now pastor of the Salem Church, Williams was sending admonishing letters to Massachusetts’s other churches, accusing the magistrates of heinous offenses and alleging that the only pure Church was his own. He had separated completely from the Church of England, whereas they wouldn’t. In fact, to make complete work of it, Williams separated from his own wife, refusing to ask blessings or give thanks at meals where she was present, because she attended public worship he disapproved of. In his speech and correspondence, he also personally applied verses from the Book of Revelation to the king, and openly challenged the king’s authority to grant a charter. This is exactly the kind of attention Massachusetts didn’t want to attract, the kind of attention which made them look like a threat to England’s stability, religious and political radicals who were against both Bishop and King alike. That December, the General Court discussed Williams’ behavior, and ruled that his arguments were erroneous, but he continued. Winthrop personally asked Williams to stop discussing these issues, as it was at best imprudent. He said he admired Williams’ fervor, but this simply wasn’t the time.
Endicott tended to agree with Williams’s “no compromise” approach, and in November, he took Williams’s provocation a step farther when he cut the St. George Cross from Salem’s militia’s royal ensign. Endicott explained that the red Cross had been given to the Crown by the Pope as a symbol of victory, that it was therefore a superstitious thing, an idol and a relic of the antichrist, and that therefore it was not proper for Christian magistrates to temporize or compromise with evil.
This could have easily been the event which finalized the King’s decision to act against the colony. Some people didn’t even agree that it was idolatrous. Hooker and Dudley said the Reformation had weaned people from the idolatrous uses of the Cross, so it was fine to use them. They were just things, and nothing worth provoking a fight with the King over. And, some of the soldiers were refusing to march with the defaced royal colors.
Among the people who fundamentally agreed with Endicott’s actions, a decision had to be made. Was it necessary or needlessly provocative? Winthrop and Cotton agreed that the Cross was idolatrous, but said the action was “giving occasion to the state of England to think ill of us.” The fall court couldn’t decide, and left the issue to the next general court, in May.
At that point, the general court came down hard on Endicott. They sentenced him “for his rashness, uncharitableness, indiscretion, and exceeding the limits of his commission,” noted that he hadn’t voiced his concerns to the colony’s authorities, and barred him from holding office for a year. Then, they questioned his use of the public money. He protested, but they rejected his request, and decided that the flag would continue to fly over Boston Harbor’s Castle William, but that the Salem militia would drill with a new flag that didn’t incorporate the Cross.
The timing and drama of the action made this one of the most iconic moments in early New England history – and it didn’t go unnoticed.