The Greatest Works of Charles Carleton Coffin. Charles Carleton Coffin
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The sheriff pulled down forty-two houses that had been built near St. Martin’s Church. They also destroyed a great many in the country.
The tavern-keepers had to pay roundly for the privilege of keeping a hotel. Some paid six thousand pounds.
Charles wanted money to build ships, and assessed taxes upon land. John Hampden was a plain farmer, and his tax was only twenty shillings, which he could have paid many times over, but it was illegal, and he made up his mind that, come what might, he would not submit to the imposition.
When a man has right on his side he can afford to make a brave fight. Riches, ease, comfort, position in society, the favor of the king, are nothing in comparison with right. Money is of little account, if we did but know it. Fire burns it, thieves steal it. Ease and comfort are delightful, but they are of the present moment, while Right is forever, and by-and-by it is going to conquer Wrong.
John Hampden would not pay his tax, and the case went into the courts, and before the courts were through with it all England was aflame with John Hampden’s spirit.
The Puritans had obtained a grant of land from Charles; but they wanted something more — a charter under which they would have authority to govern their colony. Sir Dudley Carleton, who bore the name of Lord Dorchester, was Secretary of State, and the Puritans had no difficulty in obtaining a charter, which, considering that the king had determined to rule England without a Parliament, was a remarkable document. The merchants were incorporated under the name of the “Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay.” They were to choose their own governor, a deputy-governor, and eighteen assistants. The members of the company were called freemen, and four times a year they were to meet in a general court to make such laws as they pleased, that were not in opposition to the laws of England. Here are some of the provisions:
Permission to make their own laws. Choose their own officers. Power to punish all offenders. To pardon. To rule. To require everybody in the colony to take an oath of allegiance to them. Power to expel or punish any one annoying them.
“The king has given us the land, but if the Indians claim it you are to pay them. Let no wrong be shown them,” were the instructions of the company to John Endicott. They desired that the Indians should become civilized and Christianized, and for a seal they adopted the figure of an Indian standing erect with an arrow in his hand, and underneath the words, “Come over and help us.”
The Puritans were members of the Church of England; they had not, like the Pilgrims, separated from it. It was dear to them, and it cost them a pang to think of turning away from all that they had loved and cherished. When Rev. Francis Higginson, of Leicester, the first Puritan minister who came to America, stood upon the deck of the vessel and saw the old land fading away, he wrote these words:
“We will not say, as the Separatists are wont to say, ‘Farewell, Babylon! farewell, Rome!’ but we will say, ‘Farewell, dear England! Farewell, the Church of God in England, and all the Christian friends there.’ We do not go as Separatists from the Church of England, though we cannot but separate from the corruptions of it.”
Cosy the homes they left behind them; but, with confidence in themselves and God, they looked forward to the time when they would have equal comforts far from priestly rule.
Little did he know the sorrow that awaited him. Two days later his daughter Mary was down with the small-pox, and when the ship was tossing in mid-ocean the sailors sewed her lifeless body in a shroud and consigned it to the deep.
Before the ship sailed there was a sifting of those on board, and some servants, who were idle, were sent ashore.
“We will have no drones,” said the emigrants. There were to be no idle hands in their new homes.
So long as there are human beings there will be differences of opinion, and it is well for the world that it is so; for only by looking at Truth from every side will men attain the highest happiness. What we need to learn is to permit everybody else to exercise the same freedom that we claim for ourselves. When the Puritans began their settlement on Cape Ann, men had only just begun to emancipate themselves from the thraldom of the ages. They were beginning to obtain a glimpse of the principles which underlie Liberty, and made many grievous mistakes. They expected, perhaps, to live in perfect peace, and to have no such trouble as had made life unbearable in England, but forgot that it is impossible for all men to think alike.
Two of the Salem men, John and Samuel Brown, had great reverence for the Prayer-book; and, instead of attending meeting, set up a meeting of their own, and conducted the service. There was a discussion and conflict of opinions and actions. What should be done? John and Samuel Brown were good men, but the Prayer-book was hateful, because the archbishops and bishops were tyrants who had imprisoned Puritans, and cropped off their ears and noses. If the Prayer-book was tolerated, in a very short time there would be a bishop among them, and then good-bye to freedom, peace, happiness, and everything else. A majority decided that the Prayer-book should not be used, and that the Browns were stirring up strife. If the majority were not to rule, there was an end to the colony. Under the charter they had all authority to regulate their own affairs; and as John and Samuel were disturbers of the peace and welfare of the community. Governor Endicott sent them back to England.
The persecutions of the bishops made life so bitter to the Puritans in England that many rich and influential men were desirous of emigrating to America, while others, who were not quite ready to bid farewell to the old home, were willing to help those who needed a helping hand. Matthew Cradock, a rich London merchant, gave liberally to fit out ships and otherwise help the emigrants.
One of the men well to do in worldly affairs was John Winthrop, of Groton, a little village in Suffolk County. There his father and grandfather had lived; they had attended service in the old stone church. It was a delightful place; but John Winthrop, though of a calm and even temper, was not the man to sit quietly down and lead an easy do-nothing life in the village of his ancestors, surrendering all his convictions of right, in subservience to the king and bishop. There were hardships, sufferings, and self-denial beyond the sea; but he was ready to accept anything that might come to him, rather than surrender his liberty. In the New World, under the charter which Charles had given, he would do what he could to establish a State in which God should be recognized as sovereign, and the Bible as the rule of man’s conduct; in which there should be no worrying of bulls with dogs, or sports on Sunday, but where every man should respect the day, and where all should do what was just and right toward their fellow-men. He was elected governor, to succeed John Endicott.
Eleven vessels were fitted out to transport seven hundred men, women, and children across the Atlantic.
Among the ships purchased was the Eagle; but the name was changed to Arbella, in honor of Lady Arbella Johnson, sister of the Earl of Lincoln, who, after her marriage to Isaac Johnson, had lived in the town of Boston. Her minister was Rev. John Cotton, who preached in St. Botolph’s Church — a grand old edifice, with a stone tower two hundred and eighty feet high, upon the top of which a lantern was displayed at night to light vessels out on the German Ocean into the harbor. It was from the town of Boston that the men of Scrooby attempted to escape to Holland in 1607, and were arrested and thrust into the filthy jail under the shadow of St. Botolph’s. So rapidly had some of the ideas of the men of Scrooby advanced, that Rev. John Cotton and thousands of the citizens of Lincolnshire were now ready to follow them to America.
A very important meeting of the Massachusetts Company was held in London, at John Goffe’s house, August 28th, 1629.
Matthew Cradock put this question to vote: “Shall the government of the colony be in New England or here? All in favor of transferring it to New England will hold up their hands.” The hands were raised.
“It is a vote.”
Was it simply the transfer of the management of a company across the ocean of men engaged in buying furs, catching fish, building houses, and opening farms? It was rather the transfer of a commonwealth. It was the beginning of a State. All the authority, all the power that they had desired from the king to make laws and execute them, was transplanted to America by this vote.
Isaac Johnson, Lady Arbella, and John Winthrop were passengers