XIV. membership. Among these baptized children, now grown CHAPTER up, were many men of property, reputable lives, and social influence, who conformed strictly to all the observ- 1662. ances of the established religion, which they had been educated to regard with profound veneration, but who did not feel, and who were too sincere and too honest to counterfeit those spiritual ecstasies, that change of heart, and inward assurance, in which, by the creed of the New England churches, saving faith was supposed to consist. Lacking this essential qualification, they hesitated to complete what their fathers had begun, by asking admittance as full church members to the Lord's Supper; but they insisted, at the same time, on securing for their children, also, the spiritual benefits of baptism, and the civil privileges of church membership. This demand, for some years past, had been an anxious subject 1657. of consideration, especially in Connecticut, where the churches were much torn in pieces by it, so that a Massachusetts council had to be called in to promote a 1659. reconciliation. About the time of the return of the agents, a synod met to take this subject into consideration. The majority of the ministers, alarmed at the aspect of things in England, and always better informed and more liberal than the majority of the church members, were willing to enlarge somewhat the basis of their polity. Under the influence of Mitchell, minister of Cambridge, successor of the "holy, heavenly, sweet-affecting, and soul-ravishing" Shepherd, the synod came to a result the same with that agreed upon by a select council of Massachusetts ministers five years before, authorizing what was called the "half-way covenant;" the admission to baptism, that is, of the children of persons of acceptable character, who approved the confession of faith, and had themselves been baptized in infancy, CHAPTER though not church members in full communion. This XIV. result was approved by the Massachusetts General 1662. Court. But a large party, narrow, and stiff, and resolute in the monopoly of spiritual and civil privileges, still stickled with great pertinacity for the old-fashioned exclusiveness, so that several of the ministers did not dare carry out in their own parishes that result of the synod which they had been active in procuring. Davenport and Chauncey protested against the halfway covenant. Increase Mather, the young and able minister of the second Church of Boston, opposed at first the result of the synod; but he afterward changed his mind and gave it his support. This question, which continued for several years a subject of dispute and inquietude, gave occasion to several pamphlets. The press at Cambridge was kept, however, under a strict censorship, Mitchell being one of the censors; nor was any other press allowed to be established. Connecticut and Rhode Island, having favors to ask, had been more prompt than Massachusetts to acknowl1660. edge the authority of Charles II. Winthrop for Connecticut, of which colony he was governor, and Clarke for Rhode Island, presented themselves at Charles's court in quest of charters. The season was propitious. The Restoration, at least for the moment, was a sort of era of good feeling. Winthrop might be subject to suspicion as the son-in-law of Hugh Peters; but his talents, his scientific acquirements-he was one of the founders. of the Royal Society-and his suavity of address, secured him many friends. The aged Lord Say introduced him to some influential courtiers, and he seems to have 1662. encountered little difficulty in obtaining the charter April 23. which he sought. That instrument, following the terms of the old alleged grant to the Earl of Warwick, estab XIV. lished for the boundaries of Connecticut the Narragan- CHAPTER set River, the south line of Massachusetts, the shore of the Sound, and the Pacific Ocean. It thus not only 1662. embraced a large part of the continental portion of Rhode Island, but the whole of New Haven also-an absorp tion about which the inhabitants of that colony had not been consulted, and with which, at first, they were not very well satisfied. Clarke, the Rhode Island agent, found a friend in Clarendon, the prime minister; but, in the course of his solicitations, he was obliged to expend a considerable sum of money, for which he mortgaged his own house in Newport, and which the colony was a long time in paying back. He encountered, also, obstruction in the fact that the greater part of Providence Plantation had just been included in the charter of Connecticut. An agreement, presently entered into between Clarke and Winthrop, fixed for the limit between the two colonies the Pawcatuck, declared to be the Narraganset River mentioned in the Connecticut charter; and this agreement was specially set forth in the charter of RHODE ISLAND 1663. AND PROVIDENCE PLANTATIONS. July 8. The charters thus granted vested in the proprietary freemen of Connecticut and Rhode Island the right of admitting new associates, and of choosing annually from among themselves a governor, magistrates, and representatives, with powers of legislation and judicial authority. No appellate jurisdiction and no negative on the laws were reserved to the crown any more than in the charters of Massachusetts and Maryland; but all enactments, as in the other English plantations, were to conform, as near as might be, to the laws of England. Except this authority of English law, allegiance to the crown, and the superintending power of Parliament, whatever CHAPTER that might be, Connecticut and Rhode Island were selfXIV. governed; so much so, that these same royal charters. 1663. remained the basis of their polity long after they became independent states. Historians have expressed surprise that, under the reign of Charles II., charters so democratic should have been granted. But, in a legal point of view, in the grant by the crown of independent jurisdiction, they did not differ from the other charters hitherto granted for plantations in America. The only difference was in vesting that jurisdiction in a corporation of resident freemen, instead of an English corporation or a single proprietor, with or without a local assembly. The dispute with Massachusetts. was still in embryo. The inconveniences of such independent governments had not yet attracted attention. Twenty years after, when Penn obtained the grant of Pennsylvania, intervening experience, as we shall presently see, caused the insertion into his charter of sev eral additional safeguards for metropolitan authority. The inhabitants of Rhode Island still adhered to the great principle of which Roger Williams had been so conspicuous an advocate, not of toleration merely, but of religious freedom and equality. "It is much in our hearts to hold forth a lively experiment, that a most flourishing civil state may stand, and best be maintained, with a full liberty of religious concernments;" so they stated in their petition for a charter; and the charter itself provided "that no person within the said colony shall be molested, punished, disquieted, or called in question for any differences of opinion in matters of religion who does not actually disturb the civil peace; but that all and every person and persons may at all times freely and fully have and enjoy his and their own judgments and consciences in matters of religious concernments, they behaving XIV. themselves peaceably and quietly, and not using this CHAPTER liberty to licentiousness and profaneness, nor to the civil injury and outward disturbance of others." It does not appear that the people of Rhode Island either desired to insert, or were anxious to enforce the dangerous and inconsistent proviso about licentiousness and profaneness-quite sufficient, indeed, to defeat the whole prior grant, since it is only under one or the other of these pretenses that opinions have any where been persecuted. Yet how difficult it is to act up to a principle in the face of prevailing prejudice and opposing example! The Rhode Island laws as first printed, many years posterior to the charter, contain an express exclusion from the privileges of freemen of Roman Catholics, and all persons not professing Christianity. These laws. had undergone repeated revisals, and it is now impossible to tell when these restrictions were first introduced, though probably not till after the English revolution of 1688. Statutes were also enacted in Rhode Island, as in the other colonies, prohibiting labor or amusements on Sundays. However open to cavil, yet these laws do not materially diminish the credit of Rhode Island as pioneer in the cause of religious freedom; for in which of our statute-books, even at this very day, are not similar inconsistencies to be found? The privileges of freemen were restricted in Rhode Island, by act of the colonial assembly, to freeholders and their eldest sons. For the long period that Rhode Island remained chiefly an agricultural community, this limitation was hardly felt as a grievance. Very lately, in our day, amid a manufacturing population, it excited serious discontents, occasioning almost a civil war, only appeased by the adoption of a more liberal provision. The qualifications required of freemen in Connecticut 1663. |