Volume I Part 13 (2/2)

The Commonwealth in England went to pieces at the death of Oliver Cromwell, its founder. The Stuart dynasty came back, but, alas!

unimproved. Charles II. was a much meaner man than his father, and James II. was more detestable still. The rule of such kings was destined to work sad changes in the hitherto free condition of Ma.s.sachusetts. This colony had sympathized with the Commonwealth more heartily than any of the others. Hither had fled for refuge Goffe and Whalley, two of the accomplices in the death of Charles I. Congregational church polity was here established by law, to the exclusion of all others, even of episcopacy, for whose sake Charles was harrying poor Covenanters to death on every hillside in Scotland. Nor would his lawyers let the king forget Charles I.'s attack on the Ma.s.sachusetts charter, begun so early as 1635, or the grounds therefor, such as the unwarranted transfer of it to Boston, or the likelihood that but for the outbreak of the Civil War it would have been annulled by the Long Parliament itself. Obviously Ma.s.sachusetts could not hope to be let alone by the home government which had just come in.

At first the king, graciously responding to the colony's humble pet.i.tion, confirmed the charter granted by his father; but no sooner had he done so than the hot royalists about him began plotting to overthrow the same, and their purpose never slumbered till it was accomplished.

Ma.s.sachusetts was too prosperous and too visibly destined for great power in America to be suffered longer to go its independent way as. .h.i.therto.

[Ill.u.s.tration: King Charles II.]

[1661]

The province--as yet, of course, excluding Plymouth with its twelve towns and five thousand inhabitants--contained at this time, 1660, about twenty-five thousand souls, living in fifty-two towns. These were nearly all on the coast; Dedham, Concord, Brookfield, Lancaster, Marlborough, and the Connecticut Valley hamlets of Springfield, Hadley, and Northampton being the most noteworthy exceptions. Though agriculture was the princ.i.p.al business, fis.h.i.+ng was a staple industry, its product going to France, Spain, and the Straits. Pipe-staves, fir-boards, much material for s.h.i.+ps, as masts, pitch and tar, also pork and beef, horses and corn, were s.h.i.+pped from this colony to Virginia, in return for tobacco and sugar either for home consumption or for export to England.

Some iron was manufactured. The province enjoyed great prosperity.

Boston stood forth as a lively and growing centre, and an English traveller about this time declared some of its merchants to be ”d.a.m.nable rich.”

As their most precious possession the colonists prized their liberties, which they claimed in virtue of their original patent. In a paper which it put forth on June 10, 1661, the General Court a.s.serted for the colony the right to elect and empower its own officers, both high and low, to make its laws, to execute the same without appeal so long as they were not repugnant to those of England, and to defend itself by force and arms when necessary, against every infringement of its rights, even from acts of Parliament or of the king, if prejudicial to the country or contrary to just colonial legislation. In a word Ma.s.sachusetts, even so early, regarded itself to all intents and purposes an independent State, and would have proclaimed accordingly had it felt sufficiently strong.

[1664]

Manifestly the king would not grant so much. On the occasion of his confirming the charter he demanded that the oath of allegiance be taken by the people of the colony; that justice be administered there in his name; and that the franchise be extended to all freemen of sufficient substance, with the liberty to use in wors.h.i.+p, public and private, the forms of the English Church. The people obeyed but in part, for they would not even appear to admit the king's will to be their law. The franchise was slightly extended, in a grudging way, but no new religious privileges were at this time conceded. Unfortunately political and religious liberty were now in conflict. It was worse for the Baptists and Quakers that the king favored them, and the treatment which they received in the colony inclined them to the royalist side in the controversy.

In July, 1664, commissioners arrived in Boston with full authority to investigate the administration of the New England charters. Such a procedure not being provided for in the Ma.s.sachusetts doc.u.ment, the General Court, backed by the citizens almost to a man, successfully prevented complainants from appearing before the commission. The commissioners having summoned the colony as defendant in a certain case, a herald trumpeted proclamation through the streets, on the morning set for the trial, inhibiting all from aiding their designs. The trial collapsed, and the gentlemen who had ordered it, baffled and disgusted, moved on to New Hamps.h.i.+re, there also to be balked by a decree of the Ma.s.sachusetts Governor and Council forbidding the towns so much as to meet at their behest.

[1668]

Vengeance for such defiance was delayed by Charles II.'s very vices.

Clarendon's fall had left him surrounded by profligate aides, too timid and too indolent to face the resolute men of Ma.s.sachusetts. They often discussed the contumacy of the colony, but went no further than words.

Ma.s.sachusetts was even encouraged, in 1668, forcibly to rea.s.sert its authority in Maine, against rule either by the king or by Sir Ferdinanda Gorges's heir as proprietary.

Its charter had a.s.signed to the colony land to a point three miles north of the Merrimac. Bold in the favor of the Commonwealth, the authorities measured from the head-waters of that river. But Plymouth had originally claimed all the territory west of the Kennebec, and had sold it to Gorges. Charles II. favored the Gorges heirs against Ma.s.sachusetts, and for some years previous to 1668 Ma.s.sachusetts' power over Maine had been in abeyance. Ten years later, in 1678, to make a.s.surance doubly sure, Ma.s.sachusetts bought off the Gorges claimants, at the round price of twelve hundred and fifty pounds sterling.

[1673]

From 1641 Ma.s.sachusetts had borne sway in New Hamps.h.i.+re as well, ignoring John Mason's claim under Charles I.'s charters of 1629 and 1635, still urged by one of Mason's grandsons, backed by Charles II.

Here Ma.s.sachusetts was beaten. In July, 1679, New Hamps.h.i.+re was permanently separated from her, and erected into a royal province, of a nature to be explained in a subsequent chapter, being the earliest government of this kind in New England.

[1662]

These territorial a.s.sumptions on the part of Ma.s.sachusetts much increased the king's hostility. This probably would not have proved fatal had it not been re-enforced by the determination of the merchants and manufacturers of the mother-country to crush what they feared was becoming a rival power beyond seas. They insisted upon full enforcement of the Navigation Laws, which made America's foreign trade in a cruel degree subservient to English interest. So incorrigible was the colony, it was found that this end could be compa.s.sed only by the abrogation of the charter, so that English law might become immediately valid in Ma.s.sachusetts, colonial laws to the contrary notwithstanding.

Accordingly, in 1684, the charter was vacated and the colonists ceased to be free, their old government with its popular representation giving way to an arbitrary commission.

The other New England colonies--Plymouth, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Haven--had made haste to proclaim Charles II. so soon as restored to the throne, and to begin carrying on their governments in his name. That beautiful and able man, the younger Winthrop, sped to London on Connecticut's behalf, and, aided by his colony's friends at court, the Earls of Clarendon and Manchester and Viscount Say and Seal, in 1662 secured to Connecticut, now made to include New Haven, a charter so liberal that it continued till October 5, 1818, the ground law of the State, then to be supplanted only by a close vote. Under this paper, which declared all lands between the Narragansett River and the Pacific Ocean Connecticut territory, Connecticut received every whit of that right to govern itself which Charles was so sternly challenging in the case of Ma.s.sachusetts.

[Ill.u.s.tration: John Winthrop the Younger.]

From this time on, as indeed earlier, Connecticut was for many years perhaps the most delightful example of popular government in all history. Connecticut and New Haven together had about ten thousand inhabitants. Their rulers were just, wise, and of a mind truly to serve the people. Here none were persecuted for their faith. Education was universal. Few were poor, none very rich. Nearly all supplies were of domestic production, nothing as yet being exported but a few cattle.

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