CHAPTER that is, a citizen and a voter-unless he were a member

VII. of some one of the colony churches; and admission to 1631. those churches was by no means an easy matter. Not

a fourth part of the adult population were ever members. To an orthodox confession of faith, and lives conformable to Puritan decorum, candidates for church membership were required to add a satisfactory religious experience, to be recited in the face of the congregation, of which the substantial part was an internal assurance of change of heart and a lively sentiment of justification as one of God's elect. As respected equality among themselves, these church members were strongly imbued with a democratic spirit, and were very jealous of any approach to hierarchical or even to Presbyterian forms. But toward those not of the church they exhibited all the arrogance of a spiritual aristocracy, claiming to rule by divine right.

A Church, in the Massachusetts sense, was defined to be "a body of believers associated together for mutual watchfulness and edification." There were regularly two ministers to each church-a teacher "to minister a word of knowledge," and a pastor "to minister a word of wisdom;" but this distinction, which appears never to have been very precise, soon disappeared, and most of the churches came by degrees to be content with supporting one minister. The ministers were commonly desig nated as "the elders," or sometimes "teaching elders," to distinguish them from the ruling elders, who held the third rank in the church. These ruling elders were se lected from among the laymen, "ancient, experienced, godly Christians, of lion-like courage when the sound and wholesome doctrines delivered by pastor or teacher are spoken against by any." There were also deacons, "plain-dealing men, endued with wisdom from above, to manage the church treasury."

VII.

The churches were nominally independent, yet no sin- CHAPTER gle church could venture, any more than any single church member, upon any novelties of doctrine or disci- 1631. pline, nor appoint nor retain officers not approved by the other churches. This was soon made apparent when the Salem church wished to settle Roger Williams as Higginson's successor. That ardent and vehement young minister, a decided separatist, did not hesitate to stigmatize the Church of England as anti-Christ; a piece of boldness which did not correspond with the temporizing policy as yet adopted in Massachusetts. Accordingly, the magistrates interfered, and Williams retired to Plymouth, where he remained for two years, "being freely entertained there, and his teaching well approved."

According to the system established in Massachusetts, the church and state were most intimately blended. The magistrates and General Court, aided by the advice of the elders, claimed and exercised a supreme control in spiritual as well as temporal matters; while, even in matters purely temporal, the elders were consulted on all important questions. The support of the elders, the first thing considered in the first Court of Assistants held in Massachusetts, had been secured by a vote to build houses for them, and to provide them a maintenance at the public expense. This burden, indeed, was spontaneously assumed by such of the plantations as had ministers. In some towns a tax was levied; in others, a contribution was taken up every Sunday, called voluntary, but hardly so in fact, since every person was expected to contribute according to his means. This method of contribution, in use at Plymouth, was adopted also at Boston; but, in most of the other towns, the taxing system obtained preference, and subsequently was established by law. Besides the Sunday services,

CHAPTER protracted to a great length, there were frequent lectures VII. on week days, an excess of devotion unseasonable in an 1631. infant colony, and threatening the interruption of necessary labor; so much so, that the magistrates presently found themselves obliged to interfere by restricting them to one a week in each town. These lectures, which people went from town to town to attend; an annual fast in the spring, corresponding to Lent, and a thanksgiving at the end of autumn to supersede Christmas, stood in place of all the holidays of the papal and English churches, which the colonists soon came to regard as no better than idolatrous, and any disposition to ob serve them-even the eating of mince pies on Christ mas day-as superstitious and wicked. In contempt of the usage of those churches, marriage was declared no sacrament, but a mere civil contract, to be sanc tioned, not by a minister, but a magistrate. The magistrates, also, early assumed the power of granting divorces, not for adultery only, but in such other cases as they saw fit. Baptism, instead of being dispensed to all, as in the churches of Rome and England, was limited as a special privilege to church members and their "infant seed." Participation in the sacrament of the Supper was guarded with still greater jealousy, none but full church members being allowed to partake of it.

Besides these religious distinctions, there were others of a temporal character, transferred from that system of semi-feudal English society in which the colonists had been born and bred. A discrimination between " 'gentlemen" and those of inferior condition was carefully kept up. Only gentlemen were entitled to the prefix of "Mr." their number was quite small, and deprivation of the right to be so addressed was inflicted as a punishment. "Good man" or "good woman," by con

traction, "goody," was the address of inferior persons. CHAPTER Besides the indented servants sent out by the company,

VIL.

the wealthier colonists brought others with them. But 1631. these servants seem, in general, to have had little sympathy with the austere manners and opinions of their masters, and their frequent transgressions of Puritan decorum gave the magistrates no little trouble.

The system of manners which the founders of Massachusetts labored to establish and maintain was indeed exceedingly rigorous and austere. All amusements were proscribed; all gayety seemed to be regarded as a sin. It was attempted to make the colony, as it were, a convent of Puritan devotees except in the allowance of marriage and money-making-subjected to all the rules of the stricter monastic orders.

Morton, of Merry Mount, who had returned again to New England, was seized and sent back, his goods confiscated, and his house burned, as the magistrate alleged, to satisfy the Indians; but this, according to Morton, was a mere pretext. A similar fate happened to Sir Christopher Gardiner, a knight, or pretended knight, of the Holy Sepulcher, an ambiguous character, attended by a young damsel and two or three servants. Suspected as the agent of some persons who claimed a prior right to some parts of Massachusetts Bay, he was charged with having two wives in England, and with being a secret papist. He fled to the woods, but was delivered up by the Indians, and sent home, as were several others whom the magistrates pronounced "unfit to inhabit there." Walford, the smith, the old settler at Charlestown, banished for "contempt of authority," retired to Piscataqua, which soon became a common asylum of refugees from Massachusetts. The sociable and jolly disposition of Maverick, described by Josselyn, an early traveler, as "the

CHAPTER only hospitable man in the colony," gave the magistrates VII. abundance of trouble, and subjected Maverick himself to 1631. frequent fines and admonitions. Others, who slandered

the government or churches, or wrote home discouraging letters, were whipped, cropped of their ears, and banished.

These harsh proceedings produced in England an effect not very favorable to the colony. Many discouraging stories were also told by those faint-hearted persons who went back voluntarily. In the year following the great migration, only ninety new comers arrived in Massachusetts, chiefly the families of those already there; among them, John Winthrop the younger, eldest son of the governor, and hardly less distinguished than his father in the annals of New England; also John Eliot, a young minister, afterward famous as the apostle of the Indians.

The Brownes, so summarily sent home by Endicott, had preferred against the company a claim for damages, which had been referred to arbitrators, but remained un1632. settled. They presently joined with Morton and others in a petition to the Privy Council; nor was it without difficulty, and by dwelling with peculiar emphasis on the benefits to trade and the fisheries likely to result from this new settlement, that the members of the company resident in England succeeded in parrying these complaints. Arguments of this sort carried the more weight, from the strong interest the king's government had in sustaining whatever tended to increase the royal customs, especially now that it had been resolved to call no more Parliaments. The infant colony had found an unexpected champion in the veteran John Smith, who published, 1630. just before his death, a favorable description of New England, with a vindication of the colonists from those charges of schism which already, at the moment of their