Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

CHAPTER Massachusetts passed a censure on Eliot's "Christian XIV. Commonwealth," a treatise compiled some years before 1661. by that indefatigable missionary as a frame of govern

ment for his converted Indians, but which, in his simplicity, he had lately allowed to be printed in England as a model, in the unsettled state of English politics, worthy to be adopted for the establishment there of a republican commonwealth on "a Scripture platform." Conforming to the necessity of the times, Eliot himself made a public and solemn retraction of the anti-monarchical principles contained in this book, and the circulating copies of it were ordered to be called in and destroyMay. ed. A general thanksgiving was also appointed in acknowledgment of the king's gracious reception of the colony's address.

Alarmed by repeated rumors from England of changes intended to be made in their government, the General June. Court, at their meeting shortly after, judged it proper to set forth, with the assistance of the elders, a distinct declaration of what they deemed their rights under the charter. This declaration claimed for the freemen power to choose their own governor, deputy governor, magistrates, and representatives; to prescribe terms for the admission of additional freemen; to set up all sorts of officers, superior and inferior, with such powers and duties as they might appoint; to exercise, by their annually-elected magistrates and deputies, all authority, legislative, executive, and judicial; to defend themselves by force of arms against every aggression; and to reject any and every imposition which they might judge prejudicial to the colony. This statement of rights might seem to leave hardly any perceptible power either to Parliament or the king. It accorded, however, sufficiently well with the practice of the colony ever since its foundation-a

XIV.

practice maintained with equal zeal against both royal CHAPTER and parliamentary interference.

At length, after more than a year's delay, Charles II. 1661. was formally proclaimed at Boston. But all disorderly Aug. demonstrations of joy on the occasion were strictly prohibited. None were to presume to drink the king's health, which, the magistrates did not scruple to add, "he hath in an especial manner forbidden;" meaning, we must suppose, that the king spoke in their laws. As if to make up in words what was wanting in substance, a second loyal address, in the extremest style of Oriental hyperbole, designated the king as one of the gods among men." A royal order had arrived, the result of solicitations made in England, requiring the discontinuance of corporeal punishments inflicted on Quakers; and an act was accordingly passed suspending the persecuting laws.

Jan.

As it still remained doubtful what the king might do, 1662. Bradstreet, one of the founders of the colony, and a magistrate from the beginning, with Norton, the popular minister of Boston, were selected to proceed to England as agents, not, however, without a good deal of opposition, the governor and deputy governor being opposed to it. This appointment was considered so dangerous, that the agents did not accept it without requiring a guarantee of indemnity against any damage they might sustain by detention or otherwise. A sum of money to pay their expenses was raised by loan. They were, specially instructed, among other things, to obtain leave to enact a penal law against Quakers.

Bradstreet and Norton were courteously received in England. But they found affairs there in a bad way for the Puritan interest. Notwithstanding the part taken by the Presbyterians in bringing back the king, and the promises he had made them, Episcopacy was altogether

CHAPTER in the ascendant.

XIV.

By the Corporation Act lately passed, all municipal magistrates were required to renounce the 1662. Solemn League and Covenant, and to take the sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England. The Act of Uniformity had restored the Liturgy, the canons, and the ceremonials, replacing the Church of England exactly as it stood before the meeting of the late Long Parliament. All clergymen who refused to conform were to lose their cures. To this pressure by far the greater part both of the clergy and laity quietly submitted. But a considerable portion of these forced conformists still retained many of their old sentiments, thus constituting the basis of that Low Church party, or party verging toward Presbyterianism, one of the two great sections into which the Church of England has ever since been divided. Near two thousand clergymen, however, headed by Owen and Baxter, rather than renounce Presbyterianism, suffered themselves to be driven from their cures. They found many adherents among the laity, especially the traders and craftsmen of the towns and cities, and became the fathers of that nonconformist body which has constituted ever since an important element in the political and social system of England. Swept thus suddenly from the headship of an established church, these Presbyterian ministers had now the mortification to find themselves confounded with the Independents, Baptists, Quakers, and other sectaries whom they hated. Exposed to all the old persecuting statutes, now revived in full force, they were forbidden to preach without a bishop's license and the use of the Liturgy, under a penalty of three months' imprisonment.

With the late leaders of the Independents it had gone still harder. Several of them had been already executed for their concern in the late king's death Sir Henry

XIV.

Vane, formerly governor of Massachusetts, and always CHAPTER a firm friend of New England, presently suffered a similar fate. Others were concealed or in exile. The In- 1662. dependents were far before their time. Their short reign was over. The press, which Cromwell had left free, was now again subjected to a strict censorship. These changes in the mother country occasioned some emigration to New England, but not to any great ex

tent.

The Massachusetts agents presently returned, bearers Sept. of a royal letter, in which the king recognized the charter, and promised oblivion of all past offenses. But he demanded the repeal of all laws inconsistent with his due authority; an oath of allegiance to the royal person, as formerly in use, but dropped since the commencement of the late civil war; the administration of justice in his name; complete toleration for the Church of England; the repeal of the law which restricted the privilege of voting and tenure of office to church members, and the substitution of a property qualification instead; finally, the admission of all persons of honest lives to the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper. Little favor was shown for the Quakers; indeed, liberty was expressly given to make a "sharp law" against them— a permission eagerly availed of to revive the act by which vagabond Quakers were ordered to be whipped from town to town out of the jurisdiction; those resident in the colony being subject to fines and other heavy penalties, and liable, if they returned after being once expelled, to be treated as vagabonds.

The claimants for toleration, formerly suppressed with such prompt severity, were now encouraged, by the king's demands in their favor, again to raise their heads. For the next thirty years the people of Massa

XIV.

CHAPTER chusetts were divided into three parties. A very decided, though gradually diminishing majority, sustain1662. ed with ardor the theocratic system, and, as essential to it, entire independence of external control. At the opposite extreme, a party, small in numbers and feeble in influence, advocated religious toleration, at least to a limited extent, and equal civil rights for all inhabitants. They advocated, also, the supremacy of the crown, sole means in that day of curbing the theocracy, and compelling it to yield its monopoly of power. To this party belonged the Episcopalians, or those inclined to become such, the Baptists, Quakers, and other sectaries, who feared less the authority of a distant monarch than the present rule of watchful and bitter spiritual rivals. Intermediate was a third party, weak at first, but daily growing stronger, and drawing to its ranks, one after another, some former zealous advocates of the exclusive system, convinced that theocracy, in its stricter form, was no longer tenable, and some of them, perhaps, beginning to be satisfied that it was not desirable. Among the earliest of these converts were Norton and Bradstreet, the agents, who came back from England impressed with the necessity of yielding. But the avowal of such sentiments was fatal to their popularity; and Norton, accustomed to nothing but reverence and applause, finding himself now looked at with distrust, soon died of melancholy and mortification.

The vigor of the theocratic system, by the operation of internal causes, was already somewhat relaxed. In spite of the doctrines of total depravity, special grace, and personal regeneration, the influence of parental tenderness had induced the founders of the New England churches to extend from themselves to their "infant seed" the privileges of baptism and a partial church

« ПредишнаНапред »