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CHAPTER made an order that all property employed in that business X. should be free of taxation for seven years. Ship build1640. ing was also gone into, and Peters was active in promoting that. In the course of two years, six large vessels were built, in which voyages were undertaken to Madeira, the Canaries, and presently to Spain, with cargoes of staves and fish, which found there a ready market. Wines, sugar, and dried fruit were imported in return. Thus early was commenced that career of navigation and commerce in which New England still continues so active and distinguished. Nor were manufactures neglected. The cultivation of hemp and flax was successfully undertaken; vessels were sent to the West Indies for cotton; and the fabric of linen, cotton, and woolen cloths was set on foot, particularly at Rowley, a new town between Ipswich and Newbury, where a colony of Yorkshire clothiers had recently settled, with Ezekiel Rogers, a grandson of the famous martyr, for their minister. Nathaniel Rogers, another grandson of the martyr, was settled at Ipswich as Norton's colleague, in place of Ward, who had resigned.

The jealousy entertained by the freemen of the arbitrary and undefined powers exercised by the magistrates had been exhibited in repeated calls for a body of fundamental laws, "in resemblance of a magna charta." Two 1635. commissions, successively appointed to draw up such a 1636. code, appear to have made but little progress. Several of the magistrates, in fact, were opposed to the proceeding, not only as it might limit their authority, but because the maintenance of the theocracy might make it necessary that some of their laws should run counter to that provision of the charter which required the legislation of the colony to conform to that of England-a contradiction which it was thought safer to introduce by cus

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tom and usage than by express enactment. But the CHAPTER freemen were not satisfied; and the preparation of a draft of fundamental laws had been again intrusted to Cotton 1641. and Ward, who made separate reports. Cotton had taken for his model "Moses, his judicials;" and his draft, afterward published in England, has been often erroneously represented as the first code of Massachusetts. Ward, before studying divinity, had been bred a lawyer. draft seems to have aimed at the preservation of political rights, as they began to be claimed in England, rather than at reconstructing in America a Jewish theocracy.

His

The appointment of preacher of the election sermon had hitherto rested with the Court of Assistants; but the freemen, without consulting the magistrates, and not a little to their dissatisfaction, about the time these reports were made, took it upon themselves to call Ward to the performance of that duty; upon which occasion he delivered, as Winthrop informs us, "a moral and political discourse," grounded more on "the old Roman and Grecian governments" than on the "practice of Israel."

The election that followed resulted in the main May. tenance of the rotation principle, by the choice of Richard Bellingham as governor.

At the same court Massachusetts received the submission of Dover and Portsmouth, a proceeding in which Underhill had a considerable share. Though, after his election as governor of Dover, he had resented with some insolence the interference of the Massachusetts magistrates, he presently became alarmed at a charge of adultery to which he was summoned to answer by the Boston Church. He obtained a safe-conduct, came to Boston, 1640. and confessed the adultery with which he was charged; March. but his submission not being satisfactory, the church excommunicated him. Several months after, under a new Sept.

CHAPTER safe-conduct, he came again to Boston, and on a lecture X. day, after sermon, in presence of the congregation, stand1640. ing upon a form, in his worst clothes, without a band, a foul linen cap pulled close to his eyes-he who was so fond of "bravery of apparel"-with deep sighs and abundance of tears, laid open his wicked course, his adultery, his hypocrisy, his persecution of God's people, and, especially, "his pride and contempt of the magistrates." He justified all the punishments imposed upon him, and dwelt with great pathos on the terrors of excommunication; how he had lost all his pretended assurance, being delivered over to the buffetings of Satan and the horrors of despair. "He spoke well," says Winthrop, an eyewitness of the scene, "save that his blubberings interrupted him, and all along discovered a broken and contrite heart." By these and other humiliations he obtained a reversal of his sentence of banishment; and, still further to recommend himself to favor, he pressed the people of Dover to submit to the jurisdiction of Massachusetts―a proposition which had been for some time in agitation. The magistrates of Massachusetts, in consequence of the dispute with Wheelwright about bounds, had sent to explore the Merrimac, which was thus discovered to come from the north. A parallel of latitude three miles north of "any and every part" of the Merrimac formed on the north the chartered limit of Massachusetts, and a claim was accordingly set up to all the New Hampshire towns, as falling within that boundary. A local disturbance at Dover soon gave occasion to interfere. Knolles had been superseded there by one Larkham, "a man of good parts, and wealthy," lately arrived from England, whom the people preferred to have as minister. But he did not "savor the right way of church discipline," and, much to the disgust of Knolles and

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Underhill, received into the church all who offered them- CHAPTER selves as candidates. A violent quarrel soon arose; the hostile parties took arms; Knolles marched at the head 1641. of his followers, pistol in hand, with a Bible raised on a pole as his standard; Larkham called in aid from the lower settlement; an armed party from Portsmouth came to his assistance; and a court was held, at which Knolles, and Underhill, whose intrigues on behalf of Massachusetts were not unknown, were heavily fined, and ordered to leave Dover. They applied for aid to Massachusetts; and Peters and Bradstreet, appointed commissioners, traveled on foot from Salem to investigate the matter. Just then, to add to the confusion, it was discovered that Knolles had been guilty of incontinence. In the end, both Dover and Portsmouth agreed to submit to the jurisdiction of Massachusetts; on condition, however, that, so far as these towns were concerned, church membership should not be required as a qualification to be freemen, or to sit as representatives in the General Court. Exeter came into the same arrangement the next year. Wheel- 1642. wright removed, in consequence, with some of his adherents, and founded the town of Wells, in Maine. Soon afterward he followed the example of Underhill, and, hav- 1643. ing written a penitential letter, was presently allowed to Dec. 7. return to Massachusetts; a favor extended, on similar 1644. concessions, to several of the refugees at Aquiday or May 29. Rhode Island.

Some friends in England, shortly after the meeting of the Long Parliament, had suggested an application on behalf of Massachusetts to that body. This, at first, had been declined, "on consideration," says Winthrop, "that, if we should put ourselves under the protection of Parliament, we must then be subject to all such laws as they should make, in which course, though they should intend

CHAPTER our good, yet it might prove very prejudicial to us." X. But, at the court at which Bellingham was chosen gov

1641. ernor, it had been resolved to send commissioners to ne

gotiate as occasion might offer, and especially to explain to the friends in England the many recent failures in the payment of debts. The active Peters, appointed on this mission, along with Welde, minister of Roxbury, and Hibbins, one of the assistants, succeeded in obtaining several contributions for the benefit of the colony. The younger Winthrop, who visited England in their com 1643. pany, returned not long after with capital and workmen for establishing iron works-an enterprise warmly encouraged by the General Court, presently set on foot at Braintree and Lynn, and, after some losses, successfully prosecuted. Peters, who had formerly resided in Holland, had a commission, also, from the governors of Massachusetts and Connecticut to treat with the Dutch West India Company for the settlement of limits.

From the two drafts above mentioned, that of Ward being principally followed, a body of fundamental laws had been compiled and sent to every town, to be first considered by the magistrates and elders, and then to be published by the constables, "that if any man saw any thing to be altered, he might communicate his thoughts to some of the deputies." Thus deliberately prepared, these laws, ninety-eight in number, or one hundred in1641. cluding the preamble and conclusion, were at length Dec. formally adopted by the name of "Fundamentals," or "Body of Liberties."

This curious code commences with a general statement of the rights of the inhabitants in seventeen articles, of which several may now be found embodied in the Constitution of the United States, and the State Bills of Rights. One article secures the right of moving out

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