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In May 1643 the four colonies of Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut,
and New Haven
agreed to Articles of Confederation to form the
United Colonies of New England.
Massachusetts refused to admit
rebellious Rhode Island and wanted to annex Maine.
Each of the
four colonies elected two commissioners,
and six of eight were
required for a decision.
No colony was to engage in offensive
or defensive warfare
without the consent of six commissioners.
By 1643 Massachusetts had at least 15,000 people,
and the other
three colonies had about 3,000 each.
The commissioners met annually
in September, the first and fifth years in Boston,
and the other
three years in Hartford, New Haven, and Plymouth.
The Confederation
had no executive power, and occasionally Massachusetts
refused
to obey decisions made by the other three colonies.
At the first
session in September 1643 the Commissioners
authorized Connecticut
to colonize Long Island.
In January 1643 Chief Miantonomo sold Shawomet to the Gortonists.
After Chief Uncas attacked his kinsman, Miantonomo complained
to the governments
of Massachusetts and Connecticut and in accord
with their treaty
asked for permission to go to war against Uncas.
The governors Haynes and Winthrop indicated they were neutral.
So with a thousand warriors Miantonomo attacked the Mohegans;
but Chief Uncas rallied about four hundred braves and defeated
the Narragansetts.
Miantonomo had borrowed heavy armor from a
Gortonist and was captured.
Samuel Gorton sent a message to Uncas
to release Miantonomo.
The Narragansetts paid Uncas a ransom worth
£40, and Miantonomo asked to be
released to the English,
who held him prisoner in Hartford.
At their first meeting on 7 September
1643 the new Commissioners approved
his execution, and they
ordered Uncas to put him to death in his territory.
The Commissioners
warned the Narragansetts not to retaliate against Uncas,
and they
ordered Connecticut to defend Uncas;
but this created enmity among
the Narragansetts that lasted many years.
Dutch intrusion into
Connecticut was also brought before the Commissioners,
and during
Kieft's war the Dutch asked the Commissioners for help against
the Indians.
On 25 February 1643 at Pavonia and that night at Corlears Hook
129 Dutch killed 120 men, women, and children.
In February 1644 Captain John Underhill led a Dutch army of
more than
100 men who killed about 600 Lenape Indians.
In 1644 the
English colonies began protecting the Indians
who were paying
them tribute on Long Island.
They prohibited selling arms to the
Indians, the French, or the Dutch,
and the fine was twenty times
the value of the articles sold.
During the British Civil War the General Court of Massachusetts
forbade anyone from supporting the royalist cause and removed
the name of the king from the oath of office in 1643.
Parliament
had freed New England from paying customs duties in March.
A synod
of Puritan ministers met to consider
how to respond to the Presbyterians
at Newbury.
In 1644 the General Court was divided into the magistrates
and the deputies,
and in November the Bay colony banned the Anabaptists
who did not believe in infant baptism.
Winthrop was tried for
abusing his authority in May 1645, but he was acquitted.
At Hingham
the pastor Peter Hobart complained that the government
exceeded
its powers in regard to a controversial militia election.
In 1645 Chief Pessicus led a Narragansett invasion into
Mohegan
territory and assaulted the fort of Uncas.
Both Connecticut and
New Haven sent forces to defend the Mohegans,
and a special meeting
of the Commissioners in June sent out envoys,
who were abused
by the Narragansetts.
The Narragansetts sent a gift to Governor
Winthrop in Boston,
asking for an alliance against Uncas, but
he refused to accept it on those terms.
The confederation raised
300 men with 190 from Massachusetts.
Roger Williams
secured Rhode Island by negotiating neutrality with the Narragansetts
in July.
Miles Standish was leading forces from Plymouth, and
he objected to the
Rhode Islanders
being friendly with the Indians
and demanded that they take one side or the other.
The Indians
agreed to negotiate, and they signed a treaty in August;
captives
were to be returned, and children were to be hostages.
However,
the Narragansetts and the Niantics did not restore
the captives
nor did they pay the damages.
The Commissioners called another
special meeting in July 1647,
and the sachem Ninigret came to
Boston with some Niantics
and promised to pay 1,000 fathoms
of wampum.
At the September meeting Winthrop claimed the western
territory of the Niantics for
Massachusetts; but the Connecticut
commissioners opposed this, and no decision was made.
In 1648
the Narragansetts and Niantics hired
Mohawks for a campaign against
the Mohegans.
The Narragansetts also attacked people in Rhode
Island;
but the Commissioners did not admit Rhode Island into
the Confederation
because they would not agree to be part of the
Plymouth colony.
In 1646 William Pynchon of Springfield refused to obey an order
from the General Court
of Massachusetts to pay Connecticut duties
on goods passing the river's mouth.
The Connecticut Commissioners
complained,
and they were supported by New Haven and Plymouth.
In 1649 Massachusetts asked to have the ruling revoked and
retaliated
by imposing customs on goods from Connecticut, New Haven, and
Plymouth.
After Connecticut stopped charging Springfield cargoes,
Massachusetts rescinded the customs.
William Pynchon's The Meritorious Price was published
in 1650.
The General Court in Boston quickly condemned it for
his interpretation
of the atonement and had it burned in the marketplace.
Pynchon was accused of being a Socinian for believing that Jesus
was merely
a man whom God had exalted as a moral example to inspire
emulation.
Pynchon pleaded for the clergy to be more liberal and
tolerant
so that the parishioners would not have to enter the
church as hypocrites.
He felt that putting too many restrictions
on conscience weakened the spiritual life.
When the Puritan clergy
claimed a monopoly on interpreting divine truth,
he believed they
injured their own cause.
Edward Holyoke was influenced by Pynchon
and published
The Doctrine of Life, or of Man's Redemption
in 1658.
He argued that Christianity was not well served by repressing
dissent,
and he defended every individual's right to inquire into
the scriptural foundations of faith.
In May 1646 Dr. Robert Child presented a “Remonstrance and Humble Petition”
to the General Court of the Bay colony,
denouncing the oligarchy of the Congregational
churches and asking
for civil liberty and justice in accordance with English law.
Thousands of peaceful men, taxpayers, and soldiers in the colony
were not allowed to vote.
He was fined £50 for contempt
of court and sedition, and Governor Winthrop
informed him they
would not recognize any appeal to English authority.
William Vassall
also pleaded for liberty of conscience and English law.
Child
was perceived by the Puritans as agitating for Presbyterianism
from a petition signed by 25 non-freemen that they seized on a
ship before he sailed.
In 1647 he was convicted of sedition again,
paid a fine of £200, and went to England.
Four others were
also fined, and the total of £750 was apparently intended
to help cover
the colony's deficit of £1,000.
The Parliamentary
commission confirmed the General Court's jurisdiction.
Massachusetts had required parents to educate their children
in 1642.
Five years later they passed a law that every town with
fifty families must provide
a
schoolmaster, and those with a hundred
families were ordered to establish a grammar school.
Connecticut
also adopted this when they compiled a code of laws in 1650
guaranteeing
that the General Court would not punish anyone unless a published
law had been violated.
The death penalty was authorized for most
of the ten commandments,
and they added conspiring or attempting
insurrection
against the Commonwealth as a capital offense.
The
penalties for settling with the Indians were three years in prison,
fines, and whipping.
They made it a crime to be contemptuous of
preaching or the faithful actions of ministers.
Other infractions
included playing shuffleboard, lying, and cruelty to animals.
Massachusetts passed sumptuary regulations against the poor dressing
like the rich in 1651.
Anne Bradstreet married young and came to Massachusetts in
1630 at the age of 18.
She raised eight children and wrote poetry,
which was first published in London in 1650
as The Tenth Muse
Lately Sprung Up in America.
She wrote for her children Meditations
when my Soul hath been refreshed
with the Consolations which the
world knows not.
Here are some samples from that book:
1. There is no object that we see, no action that we do,
no good that we enjoy, no evil that we feel or fear,
but we may make some spiritual advantage of all;
and he that makes such improvement is wise, as well as pious.
2. Many can speak well, but few can do well.
We are better scholars in the theory than the practical part,
but he is a true Christian that is a proficient in both.
9. Sweet words are like honey: a little may refresh,
but too much gluts the stomach.
10. Diverse children have their different natures:
some are like flesh which nothing but salt will keep from putrefaction;
some again like tender fruits that are best preserved with sugar.
Those parents are wise that can fit their nurture according to their nature.1
16. That house which is not often swept
makes the cleanly inhabitant soon loathe it;
and that heart which is not continually purifying itself
is not fit temple for the spirit of God to dwell in.
28. Wisdom with an inheritance is good,
but wisdom without an inheritance
is better than an inheritance without wisdom.
34. Dim eyes are the concomitants of old age; and short sightedness,
in those that are the eyes of the Republic, foretells a declining State.2
A synod of Congregational ministers met at Cambridge in 1648
and adopted the Westminster Confession as their creed
and decided that magistrates had a duty to suppress heresy.
After being sent
to the congregations, this became the law of the General Court
of Massachusetts in October 1651, though fourteen deputies were
opposed.
That year Dr. John Clarke, Obadiah Holmes, and John Crandall
visited
an elderly Baptist in Lynn, and they were fined.
Crandall
was released, and someone paid Clarke's fine;
but Holmes refused
to pay and was whipped.
Thomas Mayhew and his father bought the island
of Martha's
Vineyard from Lord Stirling in 1641.
Young Mayhew converted Hiacoomes
to Christianity in 1643,
and Hiacoomes began preaching to other
natives.
Mayhew respected the property rights of the natives,
and he paid annual rent
for a Christian village to the sachems
Josias and Wannamanhutt.
By 1650 Mayhew had 22 converts.
In 1643
English donations for Indian missions
were used for a new building
at Harvard College.
John Eliot became the pastor at Roxbury in
1632, and in 1643
he began learning native dialects from an old
Pequot servant in his house.
In 1644 five sachems living in Massachusetts
relinquished their property rights to be
instructed in the knowledge
of God, and they received no other compensation.
The next year
the Commissioners of the United Colonies declared war on the Narragansetts
and made them sign a treaty in which they agreed to pay two thousand
fathoms of wampum,
yield the Pequot country to the colonies, and
give sons of sachems as hostages.
On 13 September 1646 Gorton's friend Randall Holden sailed
into Boston with a letter
of protection from the Parliament that
instructed Massachusetts
to stop molesting the Gortonists in Narragansett
Bay.
Two days later John Eliot began preaching,
but the sachem
Cutshamoquin did not like what he had to say.
In August 1642 Cutshamoquin
had been put in the Boston jail during a panic
that an Indian
war was about to start.
Eliot avoided him and the other four sachems,
and on October 28, 1646 he preached
to Waban, who apparently was
made minister of justice for the village by the English.
A week
later the Massachusetts General Court enacted a law to punish
with death any person who blasphemed or reproached the holy religion,
and another law banned any pagan ritual or “pawwaw.”
All the missionary work in Massachusetts came from donations
in England.
The evangelical work of Mayhew and Eliot stimulated
Parliament in 1649
to form the Corporation for the Propagation
of the Gospel in New England,
and they authorized the Confederation
Commissioners to handle its funds.
Eliot founded a town for Christian
Indians at Natick in 1651.
The second village was for the Cohannets,
and by 1674
there were fourteen towns with four thousand praying
Indians.
Eliot translated the Bible into Algonquian, completing
the New Testament in 1661
and the Old Testament
in 1663; this was the first Bible printed in America.
He taught
a hundred natives to read.
During King Philip's War the soldiers
from Massachusetts would not march without the help
of Christian
Indians, though many of those in the Christian villages joined
the rebellion.
In 1684 Eliot, who used his "praying Indians"
for political ends,
had only four villages left in Massachusetts;
but the Mayhews had ten villages
on
Martha's Vineyard and five
in Nantucket, and Richard Bourne had ten villages in Plymouth.
Nathaniel Ward wrote The Simple Cobler of Aggawam
and
had it published in London in 1646.
Although he criticized arbitrary
government and extravagant fashions,
he argued against religious
toleration.
He believed that the heretics were free to keep away
and that it is a mistake to tolerate "hellish errors."
The Body of Liberties and the other laws were published in 1648.
After Winthrop's death in 1649, John Endecott was elected governor
of Massachusetts in thirteen of the next fifteen years.
In September
1650 the Massachusetts federal commissioners
Simon Bradstreet
and Thomas Prince mediated the Treaty of Hartford with
New Netherland
that established the eastern boundary on Long Island
as a line
south of Oyster Bay and on the mainland north from Greenwich Bay.
When the agent Humphrey Atherton led troops to collect the debt
from the Narragansetts in October, Roger Williams averted violence
with his mediation.
In 1651 New Haven governor Eaton gave 50
men a commission to settle in Delaware,
but the Dutch governor
Stuyvesant had their messengers arrested.
They appealed to the
Commissioners, who resolved
to protect another 150 settlers from
the Dutch.
In October 1651 Massachusetts Bay assumed control over
the province of Maine.
The Anglo-Dutch war began in 1652, and the English were concerned
that the Dutch were selling weapons to the Indians.
Three colonies
voted to declare war, but the Massachusetts General Court decided
that
the Commissioners could only declare a defensive war.
Massachusetts
called an extraordinary session of the Commissioners in April
1653
and sent envoys to the Narragansetts, Niantic chief Ninigret,
and Governor Stuyvesant.
The English required the Indians to give
up their arms or be considered enemies.
In September the other
six Commissioners voted to raise an army of 250 men,
but again
the Massachusetts Council decided
the war was unnecessary and
refused to participate.
Their commissioners argued that no power
could make men do what was unlawful.
By the time of the 1654 meeting
the war was over,
and Massachusetts agreed to abide by the Articles
again.
All eight Commissioners agreed to take the Pequots from
Chief Ninigret,
and they encouraged other tribes to attack him.
Tributaries were brought into two settlements
under an English
protectorate that lasted ten years.
In 1657 the Commissioners
sent messengers to the warring tribes to stop their wars,
and
they prohibited fighting in the English plantations.
In 1660 the
Connecticut colony prohibited Indians from settling
within a quarter
mile of any English town.
No less than ten women were hanged for
witchcraft in Connecticut and New Haven
culminating in 1662, after
which they did not execute anyone for witchcraft.
In 1656 Ann Hibbens was executed for witchcraft in Boston even
though
the minister John Norton said it was only because she had
more wit than her neighbors.
A few weeks later the Quakers Mary
Fisher and Ann Austin arrived in Boston.
They had their books
and belongings seized and examined,
and then they were put in
prison for five weeks before being deported back to Barbados.
A few days after that, eight more Quakers led by Christopher Holder
arrived from London and were imprisoned for eleven weeks.
In October
the Massachusetts General Court passed a law with a fine of £100
for any ship captain who brought a known Quaker to the Bay colony.
In 1657 they increased the penalty for entertaining Quakers, and
any man who returned
to the colony after being banished was to
have an ear mutilated; women were whipped.
After Holder and Copeland
each lost an ear, the death penalty
was enacted for those who
returned after banishment.
Nicholas Upshall bribed a jailer to
give food to starving Quakers in prison,
and for criticizing the
law Upshall was fined £20 and banished.
An Indian helped
him, and he found refuge in Gorton's settlement.
In 1659 Massachusetts
made each town responsible for their paupers,
and Boston established
an almshouse for the poor.
Mary Dyer had been a close friend of Ann Hutchinson,
and she
and her husband followed the Hutchinsons to Rhode Island.
They
went to England in 1650 and became Quakers.
On their way to Rhode
Island as Quaker missionaries in 1659,
the General Court in Boston
ordered her expelled.
When she refused to leave, she was stripped
to the waist and whipped in public.
She and the Quakers William
Robinson and Marmaduke Stephenson
were convicted of blasphemy
and banished.
They returned and were condemned to death for “religious sedition.”
The two men were hanged, but her son William Dyer
gained Mary a reprieve.
She returned a third time and said, “Let me suffer as my brethren,
unless you will amend your wicked law.”3 She was hanged on June 1, 1660.
William Leddra returned from banishment
in November and was hanged the following March.
Wenlock Christison
went to warn them to stop killing innocent people.
He demanded
to be tried by the laws of England.
He was condemned to death
but was allowed to depart.
Pressure by the Society of Friends
in England caused Charles II
to order these colonial laws to be
revoked in 1661.
They released 28 Quakers but refused to send
them to England for trial.
John Robinson's son Isaac and Governor
Winthrop's son Samuel also became Quakers.
During this period
of intolerance the Puritan colonies imprisoned 64 Quakers
and
whipped and banished more than forty.
The Quakers were still whipped
from town to town until Governor Endecott died in 1665,
when the
Royal Commissioners ordered Massachusetts not to molest Quakers
anymore.
While his father was serving as Massachusetts governor most
of the time, John Winthrop Jr.
was elected eighteen times in succession
to the Board of Assistants and was a magistrate.
In 1631 he had
brought his library of a thousand volumes.
He purchased land from
the Indians to develop products from black lead
that was named
graphite because of its use in pencils.
He struggled to develop
the iron industry in the Hammersmith plant,
and he was given a
monopoly for 21 years and a tax exemption for ten years.
The younger
John Winthrop emigrated to Connecticut, and he was elected governor
in 1657.
He was so popular that they changed the rules so that
he could be elected every year from 1659 until his death in 1676.
He became a partner of the Atherton land company that claimed
they bought 6,000 acres
of good Narragansett land from
the feeble brother of the sachem Pessicus.
The next year they
imposed a fine on them for various crimes; when they could not
pay,
the Atherton Company claimed all four hundred square miles
of the Narragansett land.
Winthrop was so knowledgeable in science that in 1662
he became
one of the first Fellows of the Royal Society.
In 1661 Governor
Winthrop went to England to petition the new king for a charter,
and Charles II granted Connecticut a charter that included New
Haven the following April.
Davenport and other ministers in New
Haven objected to the union
because Connecticut did not require
all freemen to be church members.
Governor Winthrop said the union
was voluntary and that no injury
would be done to New Haven, which
accepted the charter in December 1664.
In March of that year Charles
II granted the lands that had been New Netherland
to his brother
James, the Duke of York and Albany, and in November
the Commissioners of New England made the ocean the border
so that all of Long Island
became part of New York.
In May 1643 Roger Williams sailed from New Amsterdam, and in
London his first book,
A Key into the Language of America,
was published, describing
the speech, morals, and manners of the
American Indians. He wrote,
Boast not, proud English, of thy birth and blood,
Thy brother Indian is by birth as good.
Of one blood God made him and thee and all,
As wise, as fair, as strong, as personal.4
The next year he published the longer work,
The Bloudy Tenent
of Persecution for Cause of Conscience,
which he addressed
to Parliament.
Williams pleaded for the cause of truth and conscience
against the “bloody doctrine of persecution.”
He defined
persecution as molesting any person, whether Christian or Jew,
for professing a doctrine or practicing religious worship.
He
argued that a civil magistrate should not inflict any violence
or punishment
for any offense against Christ because civil weapons
are improper and unnecessary in spiritual causes.
Yet a magistrate
is bound not to allow anyone to break the civil peace.
In this
dialog between Truth and Peace is the following quote from Martin
Luther:
“The government of the civil magistrate extends no further than over the bodies
and goods of their subjects, not over their souls.”5
Truth concludes that they need their
sister Patience and notes that persecuting people
because of conscience
is contrary to the doctrine of Christ Jesus.
While the most liberal
in England were discussing tolerating all Protestants,
Williams
had founded a community which did not discriminate against anyone,
not even Jews or atheists.
However, Parliament had many Presbyterians
and ordered this book burned
by the hangman, stimulating the second
printing to be circulated even wider.
Williams believed that government was God's natural way of
coping with
the
corruption
of human nature, but government could
not be trusted to decide religious questions.
The best hope for
true religion is for government to protect
the freedom of all
religions and non-religion.
Williams learned from experience that
public peace and love
are better than a surplus of corn and cattle.
Although he did not call himself a Seeker, he believed
that Christians
should always be seeking and searching.
Williams had become a friend of the Puritan leader Henry Vane, who was
on the recently established Parliamentary Commission of
Foreign Plantations
headed by Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick, and
in March 1644
they granted a charter to Providence, Portsmouth,
and Newport.
That month the name of Aquidneck was changed to Rhode
Island.
Hugh Peters and Thomas Welde were trying to get a patent
for Massachusetts,
but they failed to gain a majority for their
Narragansett Patent,
which they sent back to Boston anyway, causing
confusion.
Williams was given safe passage through Boston
and
returned to Providence in September 1644.
Samuel Gorton made several converts in Plymouth and Portsmouth,
founding a new religious sect, but he agitated people with frank
language
and repudiated governments whose authority he questioned.
After he came to Providence in 1641, Gorton came into conflict
with the arbitration board and moved to Pawtucket.
There the Arnold
family appealed to Massachusetts,
and to get their help against
Gorton they submitted to that province in November 1642.
Governor
Winthrop sent a warning, and Gorton wrote a 25-page reply,
noting
that secret hypocrites may become tyrants.
In January 1643 Gorton
moved farther south and bought Shawomet from Miantonomo.
The Shawomet
sachem Pumham and the Pawtucket sachem Sacononoco
went with Benedict
Arnold and submitted themselves to the authority in Boston.
The
Arnolds had already purchased Pawtucket from Sacononoco,
and they
wanted Chief Miantonomo's authority superseded by Massachusetts
so that they could get Shawomet.
Miantonomo and Gorton were summoned;
but Miantonomo had no proof of his authority, and Gorton refused
to appear.
Pumham had signed the deed to Gorton with Miantonomo,
but he claimed he was under duress.
Two commissioners taught the
two sachems the ten commandments
so that they could answer questions.
In June the two sachems formally subjected their lands to Massachusetts.
Gorton merely sent a four-page letter filled with reproaches.
After the sachems shot the cattle of the Gortonists, stole
from their houses,
and threw rocks at the women and children,
the Gortonists defended themselves.
Then the Arnolds, Pumham,
and Sacononoco appealed to Massachusetts.
Gorton wrote a scathing
letter in September 1643 to the “Idol General” who made
slaves,
suggesting they might have proved themselves Christians
before mingling with the “heathens.”
Gorton warned that
they were ready to answer them in kind by pen, sword, or gun.
Forty men went across the border to arrest Gorton and nine followers
in October.
After a truce during which the soldiers broke into
the Gortonists’ houses,
they fired shots into their log house;
but the Gortonists did not fire back.
After an attempt to burn
the house, another truce was arranged,
and the Gortonists agreed
to go with them.
In court Gorton challenged the right of Massachusetts
to annex the land
and argued that the heresy charge persecuted
conscience.
When Winthrop warned him that he was facing death,
Gorton moderated his replies.
They were convicted of blasphemy
and disobeying ordinances.
The magistrates wanted to execute them,
but they were outvoted by the deputies.
The Gortonists were sentenced
to work in chains during the winter,
and their cattle and goods
were sold to pay for court costs and detention.
However, their
conversation was winning over converts, especially among the women,
and so the General Court gave them two weeks to depart.
They found
refuge at Portsmouth, where they hired houses and planted.
The Narragansetts were impressed that the Gortonists had survived
their ordeal
with the Puritans, and they invited Gorton to meet
with
Canonicus and Miantonomo's brother and successor, Pessicus.
Gorton persuaded them to submit to England in April 1644.
Gorton
became a magistrate at Portsmouth
and tried to bring about more
fair land distribution.
He went to New Amsterdam before sailing
for London, where he arrived in January 1645.
That year he published
his Simplicities Defence Against Seven-Headed Policy.
In
this and other works Gorton wrote that all humans are essentially
divine
and that conversion is apprehending this inner divinity
and being willing
to follow its guidance even against human authority.
Those who understand God in Christ find divinity in all humanity.
The divine spirit is equally near to saints and sinners, and Christ
offers freedom.
Gorton accused New England Puritans of establishing
worthless idols and distracting people
with fasts, the Sabbath,
sermons, battles, churches, and officers.
If Christ is king and
ruler, then all other authority and government is superfluous.
Justice is not administered by an officer but by every brother,
rich or poor, ignorant or learned.
Gorton criticized the privileged
status of ministers, who praise the able and learned
while burdening
the poor with obedience and sins.
No external education could
reform one's life as well as Christ could,
and women may prophesy
as well as men.
Gorton argued that the penalty of sin is not in
the future
but is the natural and inevitable result of an evil
action.
Heaven and hell are within, and upholding morality makes
one spiritually healthy.
Edward Winslow criticized Gorton and his followers
by publishing Hypocrisy Unmasked in 1646.
Winslow represented the New
England Confederation in London, and he denied that
the Parliament
had jurisdiction over America.
Commission for Foreign Plantations
chairman Warwick confirmed Gorton's title
to Shawomet and gave
the Gortonists safe conduct through Boston.
In gratitude they
changed the name of Shawomet to Warwick.
Gorton stayed in England
until 1648 teaching the mysteries of Christ.
He served as president
in Warwick for seven months,
but in May 1652 he declined to be
re-elected.
That year they banned African slavery.
Williams started a system by which pioneers could receive land
from Indian grants,
and the settlements at Portsmouth, Warwick,
and Newport
were developed by those seeking religious liberty.
In May 1647 representatives of the four towns agreed to the charter
of Rhode Island.
They abolished imprisonment for debt.
Williams
now believed that ministering should be free and not for hire,
and so he developed a business of trading useful items to the
Indians.
A few years later he published The Hireling Ministry
in which
he argued against compelling people to support the clergy.
William Coddington had twice tried to make an alliance with
the
New England Confederation in order to control Rhode Island,
but they wanted it to be part of Plymouth or Massachusetts.
After
King Charles was executed in 1649, Coddington went to England.
In April 1651 a commission appointed him governor of Rhode Island.
He was supported by conservatives such as Alexander Partridge,
but they were opposed by the liberals led by Dr. John Clarke and
Nicholas Easton.
Property owners of Providence, Warwick, and the
island of Aquidneck
sent Williams and Clarke to England in November
1651 to confirm their charter.
Clarke wrote a book about his recent
persecution in Boston
called Ill Newes from New England,
and it was published in England,
declaring
on the title page,
“While Old England is becoming new, New England is becoming old.”
Williams sold his trading business to finance the trip,
and to help his wife during an illness
he wrote, Experiments
of Spiritual Life and Health
in which he recommended Christ
as guide.
John Cotton had published a reply to Bloudy Tenent
in 1647,
and Williams wrote two more books advocating tolerance
and liberty of religious conscience.
Williams was in England for
two and a half years and had conversations with
Henry Vane, Oliver
Cromwell, and John Milton.
Williams and Clarke were supported
by Plymouth’s agent Winslow, Connecticut’s
Edward Hopkins, George
Fenwick, and the Parliament leader Arthur Haslerig,
and in October
1652 Coddington's commission was vacated.
After Williams went
back to Rhode Island, Clarke stayed on
until he gained a grant
of toleration from Charles II in 1663.
In August 1653 at a Warwick conference Roger Williams and those
favoring union
persuaded 24 commissioners to sign an agreement
reuniting the
four towns of Providence, Portsmouth, Warwick, and
Newport.
Williams was elected president of Rhode Island
in September
1654 and served until May 1657.
In October 1654 he wrote to the
Massachusetts General Court that the Narragansett
sachems asked
him to petition the English authorities so that they would not
be forced
to change their religion or be invaded by war.
Some
believed that soul liberty meant the absence of any restraint,
and some riots against government enforcement occurred in 1655.
Williams argued that people needed to obey the orders
of the ship
captain for common peace and safety.
Thus transgressors may be
judged and punished.
In 1656 William Harris published a dissertation
criticizing government,
and in March 1657 Williams had him arrested
for defying the charter and the court.
After a trial his papers
were sent to Clarke in England, but the ship sank.
In 1658 the
franchise requirement was changed
from owning one hundred acres
to owning any land at all.
Gorton offered asylum to the Quakers persecuted in Boston in
1656,
and Rhode Island became a refuge for Quakers in New England.
Six of those deported from Boston to London came back
through
New Amsterdam and Rhode Island in June 1657.
In September the
Commissioners of the United Colonies sent a complaint to Providence
warning that they may have to close their intercolonial trade
if they tolerated Quakers.
In March 1658 the Assembly affirmed
their
"freedom of different consciences" as fundamental
in their charter.
Herodias Gardner went from Newport to Massachusetts
in May with her baby, and she was given ten lashes.
Thomas Harris
in July and Catharine Scott from Providence
in November went to
Boston and were also whipped.
In June 1659 William Robinson and
Marmaduke Stevenson
went from Rhode Island to Boston to challenge
the death penalty.
Williams did not agree with the Quakers' disruptive
tactics, and he especially criticized
the two women who appeared
in public naked in 1662 and 1663.
Knowing he was unpopular, Governor Kieft summoned a council
of Twelve.
In January 1642 they approved a punitive expedition
against the Wecquaesgeeks,
and in the spring Van Tienhoven made
peace with them.
Meanwhile the Twelve petitioned Kieft for government
reforms, but he ordered them
to hold no more meetings, arguing
that they injured the country and his authority.
That summer a
farmhand was murdered by a drunken Hackensack,
and the Indians
blamed the Dutch for trading him the liquor that made him crazy.
In February 1643 ninety Mohawks killed seventy Wappinger Algonquins
near Fort Orange,
causing five hundred Indians to flee to Manhattan.
De Vries refused to protect them, and they went to Pavonia.
At
a drinking party Van Tienhoven got three of the Twelve to sign
a petition
calling for a war against the Hackensacks.
De Vries
considered it murder and warned Kieft that he would "murder
our own nation."
Kieft also ignored the pleas of Bogardus
and La Montagne.
Van Tienhoven led eighty soldiers who killed
eighty Indians,
and Maryn Adriaensen led 49 volunteers who killed
forty.
De Vries described the slaughter of Indian babies, and
he noted
that in revenge the Indians killed men but no women or
children.
Roger Williams, who was passing through New Amsterdam, urged
Kieft to make peace,
but Kieft demanded the Indians come to the
fort.
When three Canarsie approached with a white flag,
only De
Vries and one man had the courage to go out and negotiate with
Chief Penhawitz.
De Vries listened to complaints and persuaded
the chiefs
to go with him to Kieft, who gave them presents.
Three
weeks later they made peace.
Adriaensen tried to shoot Kieft for
causing the war,
but he was stopped by La Montagne and put in
jail.
Jacob Stangh took a shot at Kieft and was killed by a sentry.
Adriaensen was fined 500 guilders and banished for three months.
In April 1643 the Canarsie persuaded the Hackensack and Tappan
tribes to make peace,
but Kieft foolishly was stingy in his gifts
concluding the deal.
The Mohawks made a treaty with the Dutch
at Fort Orange in 1643.
Chief Pacham turned against the Dutch, as did the Wappingers
for the first time,
attacking three boats and killing nine settlers.
In September 1643 seven tribes with 1,500 warriors invaded New
Netherland.
Kieft called an election for a board of Eight Select
Men, and they decided
to hire Captain John Underhill, an English
leader in the Pequot War of 1637.
Kieft asked for help from New
Haven, but they offered only food.
The Indians attacked various
settlements and in October killed Anne Hutchinson
and all eighteen
in her household except her 9-year-old daughter, who was captured.
In January 1644 the colonists fought back and destroyed Wecquaesgeek
forts,
but the Canarsie sachem Penhawitz ordered his men to kill
and burn.
La Montagne and Underhill led a force that
killed 120
Canarsies on Long Island while losing only one man.
Two of the
four Canarsie prisoners were drowned,
and the other two were stabbed
in a public spectacle.
In the next major battle over 500 Wecquaesgeeks
were killed.
The Company's resources were depleted by a rebellion
in Brazil and could offer little help,
but they made a report
that one thousand Indians had been killed.
In May 1644 the governor
of Curaçao, Peter Stuyvesant,
sent 130 Brazilian Dutch
soldiers and seventy civilians to New Amsterdam.
After not meeting
for seven months, Kieft summoned the Eight in June,
and they reluctantly
acceded to raising taxes to pay for the soldiers.
Later the Eight
met in secret and sent a complaint to the Heeren 19 in Holland.
Meanwhile Kieft kept order by prosecuting dissenters.
In April
1645 some tribes began signing peace treaties,
and in August seven
more sachems signed a treaty that restored peace in New Netherland.
More than 1,600 Indians had been killed in Kieft's war
while the
population of New Amsterdam was only 250.
After the war Kieft
dissolved the board of Eight.
From 1638 to 1644 Peter Stuyvesant governed Curaçao,
an island sixty miles from Venezuela that the Dutch occupied in
1634.
He lost a leg while attacking the Spaniards on the island
of Saint Martin in March 1644.
The next year he went to Amsterdam
and was promoted to director general
of New Netherland as well
as Curaçao, Bonaire, and Aruba.
Lubbertus van Dincklage
was named his deputy.
Although they were chosen by the Heeren
19 in May 1645,
they did not arrive in New Netherland until May
1647.
The Staten Island patroon Cornelis Melyn and the Danish
Jochem Kuyter
had written the petition that Loockermans took secretly
to Amsterdam in 1644.
When Melyn and Kuyter brought charges against
Kieft,
General Stuyvesant accused them of defaming and incriminating
the former director general.
They were both fined and banished,
and in August they left on the Princess
with Kieft, Bogardus,
and Kieft's former schout-fiscal, Cornelis van der Huygens.
The Princess hit the reefs near Swansea,
and all of these men
died except Melyn and Kuyter.
Director General Stuyvesant authorized in August 1647 election of 18 men
from whom he chose the Board of Nine Select Men.
The Council
of six included Vice Director Dincklage, La Montagne, and the
schout-fiscal Hendrick Van Dyck, who was usually ignored by Stuyvesant
and drank heavily.
Stuyvesant retained the unpopular Van Tienhoven
as secretary
and George Baxter as secretary for English affairs.
The Nine rejected Stuyvesant's first request for money to repair
the fort.
They wanted a school and believed the fort was the Company's
business.
The Indian chiefs called Stuyvesant the big sachem with
the wooden leg
and confirmed their peace treaty with him.
In October
1647 Stuyvesant sent the ship Zwoll to New Haven
to capture the
Dutch ship Sint Beninjo for not paying duties.
He proclaimed
that any fugitive from New Haven
would be given freedom in New
Netherland.
Stuyvesant cracked down on the selling of arms in
May 1648 by arresting the
Fort Amsterdam armorer, Corporal Gerrit
Barendt, who gave the names of two clients,
and they informed
on a trader near Fort Orange.
However, the Company ordered the
new governor to sell arms with discretion,
particularly to the
Indians in Rensselaerswyck who wanted them for self-defense.
In
October the Director-General and the Council warned the inhabitants
to pay the Indians they employed without disputes or they would
be held liable.
Stuyvesant tried to prevent drunken brawls by
forbidding the sale of alcohol
after nine in the evening or before
two on Sunday.
In 1648 he ordered all inhabitants to attend religious
services on the Sabbath
and to avoid excessive drinking.
Drawing
a knife was penalized with a fine of one hundred guilders,
which
was tripled if anyone was wounded.
Meanwhile Melyn and Kuyter had persuaded the States General
to investigate New Netherland, and they summoned Stuyvesant.
During
a large meeting at St. Nicholas Church on 8 March 1649
Melyn presented
the mandamus to be read before Stuyvesant,
who was embarrassed
but promised to send an agent.
Adriaen van der Donck was on the
Council and became president of the Nine.
He investigated complaints,
and one day Stuyvesant went into his office and took his journal.
The next day he had Van der Donck put in jail, and at a Council
meeting
he accused him of lese majesty; only Van Dincklage had
the courage to disagree.
Van der Donck was released to house arrest.
Melyn was also protesting.
The Governor forbade the minister from
reading anything political
from the pulpit without previous permission.
Stuyvesant sent Van Tienhoven as his agent on the
same voyage
with Van der Donck and Melyn.
Van der Donck and two others from
the Nine presented the
Remonstrance of New Netherland to
the States General in October.
This blamed the poor condition
of the colony on unsuitable government,
lack of privileges and
exemptions, onerous duties and exactions, a long war,
the loss
of the Princess, too many peddlers, high mortality,
and
the arrogance of the natives because of so few settlers.
The Nine
recommended exemption from duties and taxes until the colony
was
more prosperous, free trade, promotion of the fishery, more farmers,
settling the border dispute with New England, and most importantly
eliminating the harsh procedures of the Company by having
the
States take over and allow government by the burghers.
The Remonstrance
also expressed gratitude to the Indians for their generosity
and
reciprocal trade and regret that they had not treated them better.
They wanted a public school, an almshouse, an orphan asylum, and
other institutions.
Van der Donck wrote in his book on New Netherlands
that the directors were
as bad as the Company, especially Kieft,
but Stuyvesant was not much better.
In 1649 a satirical pamphlet
called “Broad Advice” was widely circulated
in the Netherlands in which nine characters from different countries told stories
about New Netherland, the Company, Kieft, and the war with the
Indians.
In May 1650 the States General decided that all Dutch
citizens could go freely
to
New Netherland, but the West India
Company still had the authority to appoint the director.
Van der
Donck persuaded the States to detain Van Tienhoven
to investigate
his causing the Indian war and for misadministration.
In September 1650, Stuyvesant attended a conference at Hartford
and agreed to a border
between New England and New Netherland
that
recognized territories according to who was living in them.
The eastern portion of Long Island thus became part of New England.
Because he had given up territory, Stuyvesant refused to speak
of the agreement
and delayed sending a copy to the States for
years.
The next year he would not allow fifty English settlers
from New Haven
passing through New Amsterdam to go to Delaware.
Stuyvesant disregarded the Nine and refused to publish the order
from the States.
When Van Dyck joined Van Dincklage in writing
a long protest
of the General’s policies in 1651, he expelled
Van Dincklage
from the Council and put him in the guardhouse for
several days.
Van Tienhoven, who was married and had three children,
returned to America with a woman he had told he was single.
Stuyvesant
dismissed Van Dyck and made the hated Van Tienhoven sheriff.
In
1652 the States ordered New Amsterdam to elect a municipal government.
Stuyvesant was recalled, but the Amsterdam directors got this
order revoked in May.
The Company would not let any ship transport
Van der Donck,
who worked on his history of New Netherland.
After
he agreed not to accept any office or even practice law and to
obey the
Company and its director, Van der Donck was allowed to
return to New Netherland,
where he died in 1655 at the age of
35.
Rumors of war with the English stimulated Stuyvesant to get
work done on fortifications.
Instead of allowing a municipal election
he chose the magistrates himself.
The magistrates asked the Governor
to surrender the
beer and wine excises to the city, but he refused.
Stuyvesant wrote to Massachusetts governor John Endecott asking
for
continued friendly relations, but Endecott complained that
the Dutch sold arms to the Indians.
Captain Underhill, now sheriff
at Flushing, started a rumor that the Dutch were conspiring
with
the Indians against the English.
Underhill was arrested for accusing
Van Tienhoven.
In October 1653 authorities in New Haven asked
Cromwell to help them remove the Dutch.
Underhill was released
and sided with Parliament against the Dutch,
listing thirteen
reasons why the Dutch governor was iniquitous.
He fled to Rhode
Island, where privateers such as Thomas Baxter
were allowed to
operate against both sides.
In December delegates attended the
first provincial assembly (Landtag) at New Amsterdam;
ten Dutchmen
and nine Englishmen represented eight communities.
George Baxter
presented his Humble Remonstrance and Petition
of the Colonies
and Villages in this New Netherland Province,
demanding redress
for the following: arbitrary appointments without the consent
of the people,
denial of their right to organize self-defense,
enforcing ordinances without making them known,
delays in granting
patents, and grants favoring individuals.
Stuyvesant dismissed
the entire gathering and forbade all future Landtags.
In February 1654 Stuyvesant summoned his Council to prepare
for war,
and four warships arrived from Boston in May.
However,
the first Anglo-Dutch war had ended on April 5 in Europe,
and
news arrived in New Amsterdam in July.
Stuyvesant invited the
burgomasters and schepens (aldermen) to a celebration
and
said he hoped to bury all their differences and live in friendship.
The city council agreed.
Stuyvesant went to visit Curaçao
and then to Barbados in January 1655.
Admiral William Penn captured
his ship and held him until June.
While he was gone, Van Tienhoven
imprisoned George Baxter and James Hubbard
for declaring their
rights as free-born British subjects.
In 1655 the first shipload
of slaves directly from Africa arrived in New Amsterdam.
Ten slaves
had been brought to the province in 1626, and Kieft
had manumitted
them
in 1644, though their three children still served the Company.
By 1654 the Swedish colony on the Delaware had four hundred
inhabitants.
Stuyvesant had established Fort Casimir nearby with
soldiers in 1651.
Queen Christina appointed Johan Rysingh governor,
and he arrived from Sweden in May 1654 with 350 settlers.
The
Dutch surrendered Fort Casimir without a fight, and the Swedes
built Fort Christina.
However, in September 1655 Stuyvesant led
a
fleet of four ships with several hundred soldiers.
The Swedes
quickly surrendered Fort Casimir,
and after a siege of ten days
they marched out of Fort Christina.
Those Swedes swearing loyalty
to the Netherlands were allowed to stay,
but the colony of New
Sweden was ended.
While Stuyvesant was besieging Fort Christina in September
1655,
about nine hundred Indians invaded Manhattan.
The former
sheriff Hendrick van Dyck had shot an Indian woman for picking
his peaches.
The Indians went on a rampage and killed more than
forty colonists, capturing
a hundred
women and children, destroying
28 farms (bouweries), and killing or taking 600 cattle.
Forty houses on Staten Island were burned down,
and Melyn and
his family were captured and held for weeks.
By the end of October
seventy captives were returned,
but the rest were ransomed over
the next two years.
Stuyvesant came back and blamed Van Tienhoven
for
having attacked Indians after Van Dyck was wounded.
The attorney
Nicasius de Sille had been sent as a possible successor to Stuyvesant,
and he was appointed to the Council.
However, Stuyvesant and Van
Tienhoven had three votes each
while De Sille and La Montagne
had only two each.
De Sille wrote to his friend, the Company director
Hans Bontemantel,
that Stuyvesant should be replaced by an unselfish
governor.
Van Tienhoven was dismissed, and De Sille became sheriff.
In January 1656 Stuyvesant ordered the settlers to live in
villages with a blockhouse.
He even got farmers in Esopus to comply
by protecting
their construction and assigning soldiers there.
After Thomas Chambers gave some Indian workers brandy in September
1659,
trouble escalated, provoking 500 Indians to go
on a rampage.
Stuyvesant sent a force of 150 soldiers with as
many loyal Indians in October,
and the Mohawks helped mediate
a peace agreement on the first of November.
On 12 February 1660
Stuyvesant persuaded the Council and the burgomasters
to vote
for war, and he led three hundred soldiers to Esopus, declaring
war on March 25.
He kept young Indians as hostages, and in May
he sent eleven
of the Esopus prisoners to Curaçao to be
sold as slaves.
The Mohawks joined with the Susquehannocks
to
pressure the Esopus to make peace with the Dutch.
Although the Company's stock had at one time gone up as high
as 206 percent
of the original investment, by 1650 it had fallen
to 28 percent and by 1661 to 11%.
The Dutch had lost
Brazil in 1654, and despite the sale
of Amstel in 1656 the Company
debt was three million guilders.
New Amsterdam had made friends
in Virginia by abolishing the duty on tobacco in 1653,
but in
1660 England made Virginia annul their treaty with the Dutch.
In 1658 New Amsterdam constructed a wall to stop smuggling,
and
the next year the Company fined a smuggler four times the value
of his goods.
Guards were posted on every merchant ship in the
harbor.
A Latin (high) school was started in New Amsterdam in
1659.
Settlers from religious denominations other than the Dutch
Reformed Church
were grudgingly tolerated in New Netherland, primarily
because the Company insisted
that they do so; 23 Jews arrived
in the summer of 1654 and had to struggle for their rights.
The
militiamen would not let them enlist, and in 1655 Jews
were required
to pay a special tax because of their exemption.
In 1657 Jews
were granted the right to be burghers.
Quakers, expelled from
Boston, came to New Amsterdam in August 1657.
Several were arrested,
and the preacher Robert Hodgson
was whipped for refusing to labor
as punishment.
He was hung up by his hands and beaten for several
days.
Stuyvesant’s sister, Mrs. Beard, upbraided the Governor
so persistently that he finally released Hodgson.
Two weeks later
Henry Townsend was sentenced to a fine, flogging, and banishment
for holding Quaker meetings in his house; but the officers of
Flushing refused to punish him
and sent a protest saying, “The law of love, peace, and liberty, extending in the state
to Jews, Turks, and Egyptians, forms the true glory of Holland”
as well as to “Presbyterian, Independent, Baptist, or Quaker.”6
The document was signed by 31 people.
In response Stuyvesant fired
and fined the sheriff 200 guilders plus court costs,
imprisoned
the town clerk, and suspended two magistrates; other signers were
also penalized.
When three more Quakers arrived in September 1658,
Stuyvesant had them expelled.
John Bowne held Quaker meetings at his home in Flushing.
When
magistrates informed Stuyvesant,
he ordered Bowne arrested and
fined in September 1662.
He proclaimed that any public exercise
of religion other than the Reformed Church
would be penalized
with a fine of 50 guilders, and the fine for importing or distributing
“seditious” religious writings was 150 guilders and
for those receiving them 50 guilders.
Bowne refused to pay a fine
and was deported to Holland in January 1663.
Stuyvesant threatened
more severe persecution, but then he learned that
his brother-in-law's
sister, Judith Varleth, was imprisoned at Hartford for being a
witch.
Learning of Bowne's case, the directors at Amsterdam sent
Governor Stuyvesant a letter reprimanding him and advising,
The consciences of men ought to be free and unshackled,
so long as they continue moderate, peaceable, inoffensive,
and not hostile to the government.
Such have been the maxims of prudence and toleration
by which the magistrates of this city have been governed;
and the consequences have been,
that the oppressed and persecuted from every country
have found among us an asylum from distress.
Follow in the same steps, and you will be blessed.7
Connecticut governor John Winthrop Jr. went to London, and
his colony was
awarded New Haven and the territory claimed by
the Dutch called New Netherland.
This news reached Stuyvesant
at New Amsterdam in September 1662.
The General Court at Hartford
sent a letter in October informing Westchester
that they were
now part of Connecticut,
and they ordered Captain John Young to
annex all of Long Island.
In 1656 the Dutch West India Company had sold Fort Casimir
and land by the
mouth
of
the
Delaware with its valuable forests
to the burgomasters of Amsterdam for 700,000 guilders.
They sent
three well supplied ships with 160 colonists to found
New Amstel
with Jacob Alrich as director, arriving in February 1657.
In September
1659 Maryland’s Council sent its president, Col. Nathaniel Utie,
with seven men to negotiate, and in response Governor Stuyvesant
sent sixty soldiers.
The Bohemian businessman, Augustine Heerman,
and Resolved Waldron
were sent on a diplomatic mission to Maryland.
The settlers by the Delaware suffered starvation, and Alrich died
at the end of 1659.
Alexander D’Hinoyosa succeeded him at New
Amstel
and resisted the jurisdiction of the Dutch Company.
A group
of 25 Mennonites emigrated there in 1662.
D'Hinoyosa went to Amsterdam
and returned in August 1663 with a hundred settlers
The Heeren
19 decided that the best way to protect the Delaware territory
was to hand it over to the city of Amsterdam.
Stuyvesant agreed
to this when D’Hinoyosa visited New Amsterdam in December 1663.
The village of Wiltwyck was suffering attacks from Indians
in the Esopus area.
In June 1663 the Indians killed more than
20 colonists
and captured 45 while 25 were missing.
Stuyvesant
called for volunteers.
Captain Martin Cregier led a force of 121
soldiers, 41 volunteers, 41 Indians, and 7 Africans.
They destroyed
two Indian forts and crops, killed more than 30,
and rescued 22
Wiltwyck captives.
The Esopus lost their independence and joined
the Wappinger tribe.
On their behalf the Hackensack chief Oratamy
went to New Amsterdam's council
in December; they agreed on a
truce for two months
while he tried to locate the five remaining
captives.
In September 1663 Stuyvesant went to Boston and met with the
eight commissioners of the United Colonies of New England.
He
complained that Connecticut had broken the Hartford Treaty of
1650,
and their friendly negotiations reached no conclusions.
In November a force of 300 English prepared to take over the English
towns on Long Island.
The next month John Scott told Hempstead
that King Charles II had promised
to give the island to his brother
James, the Duke of York,
and in January 1664 the towns elected
John Scott their president.
He proclaimed freedom and told them
to stop obeying and paying taxes to Stuyvesant,
who used the excise
tax on taverns and magistrates to raise an army of 360 men.
Stuyvesant
went to Hempstead in March and agreed that the English towns
on
Long Island would be under the English king for the next twelve
months.
Hartford authorities arrested Scott, though he escaped
to Long Island in July.
The Duke of York received his charter and published it on March 12.
In April 1664 representatives of the twelve towns of
New Netherland
met in a General Assembly.
Governor Stuyvesant proposed that they
arm every sixth man
and put a tax on cattle and mills.
In May
he made a peace treaty with eleven Indian chiefs.
The Duke of
York received his charter and published it on March 12.
Four ships
with 300 soldiers led by Col. Richard Nicolls
sailed on May 25
to take Long Island.
In the north the Mahicans were fighting the
Mohawks and invaded the Fort Orange area,
killing cattle and burning
houses.
Stuyvesant summoned the soldiers from Fort Orange to defend
New Amsterdam.
On September 1 an English delegation
demanded they surrender,
promising security to all those willing
to submit to their government.
The Dutch had only 150 soldiers
and 250 armed citizens.
On September 5 some prominent citizens
and magistrates petitioned Stuyvesant to surrender.
In the treaty
the Dutch were guaranteed freedom of conscience and trade,
and
Director General Stuyvesant signed the agreement on September
8.
New Netherland under the English became New York.
Alexander d’Hinoyosa tried to hold out with fifty soldiers in Delaware,
but they were defeated.
Three Dutch soldiers were killed, and
the rest were sold as slaves in Virginia.
James was Duke of York
and Albany, and Fort Orange was renamed Albany.
In October 1664 every Dutch citizen in New York, including
Stuyvesant,
had to swear allegiance to the British king.
During
Stuyvesant's government the population of New Netherland
had increased
from 2,000 in 1647 to 10,000.
The West India Company summoned
Stuyvesant to Amsterdam and charged him
with neglect, but he criticized
the shortcomings of the Company policies and support.
After the
second Anglo-Dutch War of 1665-67, Stuyvesant
returned to New
York and lived on his farm until his death in 1672.
When the English Civil War broke out in 1642, Governor Leonard
Calvert
gave his authority to Giles Brent and went to England.
The sea captain Richard Ingle strongly supported Parliament
and
defied the authority of the King in Maryland.
Brent ordered him
put under arrest and told Sheriff Parker to keep him
under guard
on his ship while four juries could not reach a verdict.
One night
Parker and two members of the Council
removed the guard and let
Ingle and his ship escape.
Leonard Calvert returned to Maryland
in the fall of 1644 with a
new commission that did not allow him
to approve of temporary laws,
which the Assembly passed to check
the power of the Proprietor.
Calvert was also commissioned by
the King,
and Ingle attacked Maryland in 1645, offering his men
plunder.
He captured a Dutch vessel and imprisoned Brent.
Ingle
pillaged the manor of Thomas Cornwaleys
even though he was one
of the councilors who let him escape.
Some inhabitants sent a
petition to the Committee
for Foreign Plantations to protest Baltimore's
charter.
Cloberry and seventeen other merchants also petitioned
the Lords of Trade
to take Maryland away from Baltimore (Cecil
Calvert).
Leonard Calvert was in Virginia, and he approved
the Council's
choice of Edward Hill as provisional governor.
Calvert returned
to Maryland, but he died on 9 June 1647 after naming the
royalist
Catholic Thomas Greene as governor and Margaret Brent as executrix
of his estate.
She assessed Baltimore to pay a debt of 18,548
pounds of tobacco to the estate,
and the Assembly upheld her right
as the attorney.
She handled numerous cases in the Provincial
Court of Maryland
but was not allowed to serve in the Assembly.
Early in 1648 Greene pardoned all those involved in Ingle's rebellion
if they obeyed the proprietary government.
Because of widespread
criticism that Greene was oppressing Protestants,
Baltimore replaced
him with the Protestant William Stone in August 1648.
The new
governor took an oath that he would not discriminate
in conferring
offices because of a person's religion.
Ingle had stolen the Great
Seal of Maryland, and Baltimore sent a new one with the motto,
“Masculine Deeds, Feminine Words.”
The Assembly rejected
a provision prescribing an oath of allegiance to the Proprietor.
In November 1649 the acting governor Greene proclaimed allegiance
to Charles II;
but Baltimore quickly disavowed and annulled this
blunder in England,
and he removed Greene from the Council.
In April 1649 the Maryland Assembly passed twelve laws,
including
the famous “Act Concerning Religion.”
The first part
declares that anyone who blasphemes God or denies the Christian
trinity
may be punished with death and confiscation of property.
Although no one was ever put to death in Maryland because of this
law,
it did deter Jews from settling in Maryland.
Anyone who called
someone a “Schismatic, Idolater, Puritan, Presbyterian, Independent,
Popish Priest, Jesuit, Jesuited Papist, Lutheran, Calvinist, Anabaptist, Brownist, Antinomian,
Barrowist, Roundhead, Separatist,”8 or another name
in a “reproachful manner” could be fined
ten shillings.
The second part of the Act noted that enforcing
conscience in matters of religion
has had dangerous consequences
in states and that
for a more peaceful government it is better
to preserve mutual love.
Therefore they enacted that no believer
should be “troubled, molested, or discountenanced,
for or in respect of his or her religion nor in the free exercise thereof within this province.”9
That year about 300 Puritans
settled near the Severn River at a place they called Providence.
They were represented in the Assembly of 1650, which was the first
to separate the
upper house of the Governor, Secretary, and the
Council
from the lower house of the fourteen elected burgesses.
Virginia’s Richard Bennett and Claiborne led the reduction
of Maryland in 1652,
and the Protestant governor William Stone
agreed
to follow the instructions of the English Commonwealth.
However, when Stone refused to accede to an interview, Bennett
and Claiborne
seized the government and appointed a board of ten
commissioners.
Five of them led by Governor Bennett signed a peace
treaty
with five chiefs of the Susquehannocks and two of their
Swedish allies.
The Yaocomico and Matchoatick tribes were warned
to stay south of the Potomac River.
Baltimore ordered Stone to
take the colony back by force.
Stone led militia that demanded
an oath of allegiance to Baltimore
and disarmed and plundered
those who refused.
Some had come to Maryland and had been guaranteed
freedom of conscience
by Governor Stone, and they now took up
arms in a civil war.
On 25 March 1654 Protestants supporting
Bennett and Claiborne
defeated Stone’s forces, killing twenty.
Losing only three men, the Puritans claimed victory.
A New England
ship seized the boats of the Governor,
and after a court martial
four prisoners were executed; Captain Stone was imprisoned.
Maryland
came under the Protectorate, and the Puritan commissioners
and
the Maryland Assembly excluded Papists.
They passed 46 laws, denying
religious liberty to Catholics, Episcopalians,
and other sects
that “practice licentiousness.”
The Puritans also drove
the Jesuits out of Maryland to Virginia.
Protector Oliver Cromwell sent a letter to Bennett dated in January 1654 requiring him
“to forbear disturbing the Lord Baltimore, or his officers, or people in Maryland,
and to permit all things to remain as they were before
any disturbance or alteration made by you.”10
The Proprietor Baltimore submitted to the Protector’s authority,
and Cromwell recognized his proprietary rights in Maryland.
In
September 1655 Cromwell wrote to the Commissioners of Maryland
that he only wanted to prevent violence between Virginia and Maryland.
In July 1656 Baltimore appointed Josias Fendall to replace
Stone as governor,
and he sent his younger brother Philip Calvert
to be secretary.
However, the Puritans retained control until
Baltimore made an agreement
with Samuel Matthews in November 1657.
He granted amnesty and indicated that Puritans could freely leave
Maryland within one year.
Fendall assumed authority and with Philip
Calvert he met with the Puritan leaders
William Fuller and Richard
Preston, and in March 1658 they signed an agreement.
However,
only three of the burgesses were in the Proprietary party.
Fendall
took the side of the lower house, which in 1660 dissolved the
Proprietary Council.
When Charles II became king, he ordered Virginia
to help Baltimore,
who commissioned Philip Calvert as governor.
Fendall was barred from holding office.
Cecil Calvert (Baltimore) appointed his only son Charles Calvert
to succeed his uncle Philip as governor of Maryland in 1661.
Cecil
Calvert had founded Maryland and essentially owned it
until he
died in 1675, though he never visited America.
He worked for the
colony, made a little profit, and
wisely insisted on religious
toleration of Protestants and Catholics.
A few Quakers had difficulty
in 1658 when
Governor Fendall required all men to serve in the
militia.
An order expelled those who refused to join the militia
or take oaths.
In 1662 the Assembly declared that when the laws
of Maryland were silent,
the common law of England would apply.
In June 1642 the Virginia General Assembly declared its opposition
to reviving the Company,
and they helped the poor by repealing
the poll tax that was used to pay the Governor’s salary.
A law
passed in 1643 prohibited the Governor and Council
from imposing
taxes without the Assembly's consent.
Paying bounties for wolves
helped increased the livestock, and a fencing law
placed the burden
on the farmers to protect their crops from the roaming animals.
With William Berkeley's leadership they made peace with the Indians,
arranged a trade agreement with Maryland,
and assessed taxes by
the size of estates and ability to pay.
During the English Civil
War they paid Berkeley’s expenses
In the summer of 1642 Philip
Bennett traveled to Boston and brought back three ministers,
but
in March 1643 the General Assembly enacted a law
requiring all
ministers to conform to the Church of England.
Two of the ministers
left, but William Thompson stayed and converted Thomas Harrison.
After the Indian massacre of 1644 Harrison regretted the expulsion
of the Puritans,
and in 1645 he was charged with refusing to read
the Book of Common Prayer.
Yet Harrison and his elder were
allowed to remain in Virginia for three more years.
On April 18, 1644 Indians attacked settlers near the heads
of the rivers
and south of the James River, killing at least 500 people.
Again Chief Opechancanough, now very old, was
the instigator of the surprise attack.
Berkeley personally led
the counterattacks against the Pamunkeys
and others until he left
for England in October.
Then Secretary Richard Kemp as acting
governor took charge of the war,
and Captain William Claiborne
led campaigns.
Opechancanough was captured and taken to Jamestown;
but he was shot in the back by a soldier before he could be sent
to England.
Four forts near the James River were built in 1645.
Necotowance became chief of the Powhatans, and in the treaty of
1646
he agreed to pay twenty beaver skins annually in tribute
to the King of England.
In 1648 the Assembly allowed Governor
Berkeley to press ten men for his bodyguard,
but they protested
an act giving the Governor and Council
the authority to impress
soldiers without their consent.
When news arrived in 1649 that King Charles had been beheaded,
the General Assembly declared it a violation of the laws of England
and of God.
Seven ships brought supporters of the King, and they
were given refuge in Virginia,
which also took in 1,610 royalist
prisoners
after Charles II suffered a defeat at Worcester in 1651.
Charles issued a commission to Governor Berkeley in 1650 from
his exile in Holland,
and the General Assembly also supported
the King.
In October 1651 the Parliament passed the Navigation
Act
that forbade importing foreign goods except in English ships.
The British navy was ordered to seize foreign ships trading with
the colony,
and no English ships could sail to Virginia without
a license from the Council of State.
However, the blockade was
not enforced, and the Dutch increased their trading.
The next year the Parliament diplomatically required Virginia
to publish their acts
abolishing the kingship, the House of Lords,
and use of the Book of Common Prayer.
The ships carrying
the commissioners and a military force
also took shoes and other
needed trading goods.
They reached Jamestown in January 1652,
and after a long debate
the House of Burgesses disbanded Berkeley’s army of more than a thousand men.
The powers of Governor Berkeley
and the Council were nullified,
and the General Assembly became
the governing body.
The rights of the people were secured, and
Virginia was allowed free trade.
Those inhabitants choosing not
to take the oath of allegiance required
by the Parliament were
given one year to leave the colony.
The three commissioners signing
the articles of surrender for the Parliament on March 12
were
Richard Bennett, William Claiborne, and Edmund Curtis.
Bennett
had been persecuted by Berkeley’s administration and had taken
refuge in Maryland,
and Claiborne had been dismissed as Virginia’s treasurer and had fled to England.
In the spring the General Assembly
appointed Bennett
governor of Virginia and Claiborne the highest
ranking councilor.
In May the people in Northampton County across
the Chesapeake Bay protested a poll tax
because they were not
represented in the Assembly.
In 1653 merchants sent Cromwell's
Council of State a petition that
people in the colonies needed
clothing and other necessities.
When Bennett went to England as Virginia’s agent in 1655,
the
General Assembly elected Edward Digges governor.
Early the next
year more than six hundred Siouans from the upper Rappahannock
settled by the falls of the James River.
Col. Edward Hill led
a force that included Pamunkey allies led by Totopotomoi.
However,
they were defeated at the place called Bloody Run,
and most of
the Pamunkeys including the chief were killed.
In 1656 the General
Assembly passed several laws to improve relations with the Indians.
For every eight wolves' heads brought in, they promised the chief
a cow.
The native children kept as hostages were not to be treated
as slaves
but were to be educated in Christianity and taught a
trade.
Indians were prohibited from selling their lands without
the General Assembly’s consent.
They abolished the law allowing
a colonist to shoot an Indian without a badge
in English territory,
and all freemen were allowed to trade with Indians.
Also in 1656
all free men who paid taxes were given the right to vote for burgesses.
In 1657 Digges went to England, and Samuel Mathews became acting
governor.
Although he refused to call an Assembly in May,
the
following March they continued him and his Council in office.
The 131 acts passed then and others the next year demonstrated
the liberal spirit of the representational government.
They left
religious issues to parishioners while trying
to suppress drunkenness,
cursing, and other offenses.
The Burgesses voted that no attorney
should be allowed to plead a case in court for pay.
The penalty
for selling arms or ammunition to the Indians was forfeiture of
one's entire estate.
They prohibited planters from encroaching
on Indian lands or kidnapping Indian children.
They abolished
the penalty of reducing a free person to servitude.
During the
years of the Commonwealth the Burgesses declared their popular
sovereignty.
The royalist William Berkeley was elected governor again by
the General Assembly
in March 1660 before Charles II was restored
to the throne of England in May.
When the news arrived,
the power
shifted back to the Governor and the Council he appointed.
In
March 1660 the Assembly enacted a law suppressing the Quakers
and
another with a bounty to encourage the Dutch to import African
slaves.
That year the Parliament passed another Navigation Act
requiring that all tobacco
shipped from the colonies must go to
England and pay a duty to the King.
This depressed the price of
tobacco and increased the freight rates.
By 1660 the population
of Virginia had risen to 25,000.
In 1661 the Assembly gave the
Governor and Council authority to levy taxes
up to twenty pounds
of tobacco per person for three years.
No one was allowed to trade
with the Indians without a commission from the Governor.
While Berkeley was in England for a year and a half,
Col. Francis
Moryson acted as governor.
In 1662 the Assembly ordered that 32
brick houses be built in Jamestown
with one from each county,
but this experiment to start a city failed.
In December the Assembly
extended the
religious suppression of dissent to include all separatists.
Persons attending meetings were to be fined
for the first two
offenses and banished for the third.
Some of the soldiers, who
had been made prisoners of war for serving Cromwell
and had been
condemned to indentured servitude, plotted a mutiny set for 6 September
1663
in Gloucester County; but an indentured servant reported
the conspiracy
and was rewarded with his freedom and 5,000 pounds
of tobacco.
The Assembly passed a law prohibiting servants from
leaving home without a special permit.
Also in 1663 the Assembly
passed a resolution that taxing land was more fair
than taxing
people, and the Governor agreed; but the poll taxes continued.
1. The American Puritans ed. Perry Miller, p. 276-277.
2. The Puritans: A Sourcebook of Their Writings ed. Perry
Miller and Thomas H. Johnson,
p. 575-576.
3. History of the United States of America by
George Bancroft, Volume 1, p. 367.
4. Roger Williams by Perry Miller, p. 64.
5. The Gentle Radical by Cyclone Covey,
p. 137.
6. The Dutch and Quaker Colonies in America,
Vol. 1 by John Fiske, p. 272.
7. History of New Netherland, Vol. 2 by E. B.
O'Callaghan, p. 457.
8. History of Maryland, Vol. 1 by J. Thomas Scharf,
p. 175.
9. Ibid., p. 176.
10. History of the Colony and the Ancient Dominion
of Virginia by Charles Campbell,
p. 230.
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