Massachusetts Bay Colony

“ In the wilderness, men come to know one another well; and her neighbors' faith in the Bay Colony's purity of motive had been too often sorely tried to permit them, perhaps, to do her entire justice. War was declared in September, seven of the eight Commissioners voting in favor of it, although Massachusetts refused to be bound. [582] Her interpretation of the Articles having been vehemently denied by the western colonies, she turned to Plymouth, but failed to overawe her little neighbor, who bluntly answered that the Articles “are so full and plaine that they occation not any such queries.” ”

“ If such outbreaks had occurred in other parts of New England, the offenders would have been punished—yes, even in the liberal colony planted by Roger Williams. For being annoyed, Massachusetts cannot be blamed. For resorting to the extreme measures she did in dealing with the followers of Fox, the Bay Colony had no excuse. ”

“ The people of Massachusetts Bay were sorry to have them go. They would have been glad to have this rich and influential company join their colony, but these new settlers wished to found a colony of their own in which they could carry out their own ideas of what a model state should be, both in civil and religious matters. They took ship, therefore, from Boston for Quinnipiac, carrying all their goods and provisions with them. The expedition was well fitted out and all its details had been carefully planned before they left England. ”

“ They were fined, whipped, imprisoned, and sent out of the colony; yet they as constantly returned, glorying in their sufferings. At last four were executed. The people beginning to consider them as martyrs, the persecution gradually relaxed.
A UNION OF THE COLONIES of Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, New Haven, and Connecticut, was formed (1643) under the title of THE UNITED COLONIES OF NEW ENGLAND. This was a famous league in colonial times. The object was a common protection against the Indians and the encroachments of the Dutch and French settlers. ”

“ Meanwhile, the colony of Massachusetts, which had been founded in the year 1624, increased rapidly. It was first planted at Nantasket, a deserted village of the Indians, at the entrance of the Bay of Massachusetts, where the Plymouth settlers had previously erected a few houses, for the convenience of carrying on their trade with the neighboring tribes. Another settlement had been formed, two years later, at Naumkeak, a tongue of land of remarkable fertility, where also a deserted Indian village was found, which formed the commencement of the town afterwards called Salem ”

“ In tracing the foundations of the latter, we find the influence of Massachusetts far more potent, for they were being laid mainly by men who found scant room in that increasingly reactionary commonwealth. The founders of Rhode Island and Connecticut alike condemned the religious and political policy that the Bay Colony had now definitely made its own; and the more democratic and tolerant forms of government, which developed in the two former, “represented more nearly the principles which underlie the government of the United States to-day than any other of the British colonies.” ”

“ In its early years Massachusetts had no rest. Three profound disturbances—the expulsion of Williams, the secession of Hooker and his followers, and the Hutchinsonian convulsion—followed one another in breathless succession, and a dangerous Indian war ran its course at the same time. That the early settlements were founded on "rocks and sands and salt marshes" was not the chief misfortune of the Bay colony. Its ecclesiastical politics proved explosive, to the consternation of its pious founders, who like other settlers in Utopia had neglected to reckon with human nature. ”

“ The Massachusetts authorities had thus utilized the request of one faction in a settlement wholly outside their own limits, to extend their jurisdiction. They had attempted, upon a charge of heresy directed against persons living in another colony, to murder the entire body of the opposing faction, after refusing the arbitration proposed by that faction's own enemies. When the decree was finally softened to banishment, this was held to include exclusion of the prisoners from their former homes, now considered as part of the Bay Colony. ”

“ The men who are before me will not forget that the settlers of the London colony of Virginia, and settlers of the Plymouth colony of Massachusetts, have been at the front of every great movement which has agitated this nation from its birth. When it came to the question of whether we should dissolve the political ties that bound us to the British King, Massachusetts Bay and the colony of Virginia were the first to form [Pg 1269] their Committees of Safety, exchange their messages of mutual support, and strengthen the weak among their sister colonies. ”

“ Rhode Island was the only New England colony that did not compel the building of schoolhouses and the education of children.
So determined was Massachusetts to have schools that in 1636, only six years after the settlement of Boston, the General Court, which was composed of representatives from every settlement in the Bay Colony, and which was the same as our House of Representatives to-day, gave over half the annual income of the entire colony to establish the school which two years later became Harvard College. ”

“ In the beginning it was but one of many trading enterprises of the New World. To-day it has adapted itself to the tremendous changes in our civilization and it is bigger, stronger, and richer than ever.
Massachusetts Colony was not fifty years old when the Nonsuch, loaded to the waterline with the first cargo of furs, sailed for England from Hudson Bay. The success of the voyage led the dukes and lords who backed the venture to ask King Charles II for a charter. ”

“ Fear of the Indians, with whom hostilities were liable at any time to break out, prevented the colonists from selecting farms far inland. The strong settlements on Massachusetts Bay induced the Plymouth people to extend their settlements along the ocean shore in that direction. The second church of the Plymouth colony was established at Duxbury. ”

“ The Puritan leaders of the Massachusetts Company encouraged colonists of their own faith to emigrate. By 1634 four thousand had come and about twenty villages had been founded on or near the bay. Houses, churches, and shops were built; farms were tilled; fur, lumber, and salt fish were sent to England and manufactured goods were brought back.
The laws of the Massachusetts colony were very strict. People were taxed to support the church, and only men who were church members were allowed to vote or to hold office as magistrates. Everyone was required to attend church services. ”

“ An experience similar to that of the Virginia settlers—disappointment, hardship, death—attended the immigrants who, under George Popham, Raleigh, and Gilbert, attempted to make a permanent home on the coast of Maine, but their house was a log camp, with not a solitary woman to light its gloom or cheer its occupants. Failure, defeat, and death were the inevitable consequences. There was no family, and there could be no permanency of civilization.
The planting of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay Colonies was of another sort. ”

“ It was also fortunate that Massachusetts was flanked by and often competed with by her neighbors, Plymouth, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire, who were protected against her by a jealous government in England, and that the Dutch cut off her ambitious territorial aspirations to the west. In the separate colonial life was sown the spirit of local patriotism which is now embodied in the American States. In New England, as in the South, there was a leading, but never a dominant, colony ”

“ When the Massachusetts charter was recalled they were in fact British "plantations"; weak and scattered coast settlements, hemmed in by hostile Indians, separated from each other by long stretches of wilderness; without the inclination or the opportunity for intercourse, they struggled in isolation, often for bare existence. At the time of the passage of the Stamp Act they were wealthy and stable communities, whose thrifty and venturesome people had long since joined colony to colony all along the coast, and were already pushing across the mountains to occupy the great interior valleys. ”

“ Chapter 29 - The Founding of Connecticut and War with the Indians Many of the people who founded Massachusetts Colony were well-to-do people, people of good family, aristocrats in fact. They were men accustomed to rule, accustomed to unquestioning obedience from their servants and those under them. They believed that the few were meant to rule, and the many meant to obey. The idea that every grown-up person should have a share in the government never entered their heads. Their Governor, Winthrop, was an aristocrat to the backbone. ”

“ No people ever left their homes to go into exile for nobler ends, no colony was ever founded in a braver fashion. And it is with some regret we remember that these brave Pilgrim Fathers have given a name to no state in the great union. For the Colony of Plymouth, having held on its simple, severe way for many years, was at length swallowed up by one of its great neighbours, and became part of the State of Massachusetts. ”

“ In the charter of Massachusetts Bay, 1628, the colonists are warned to lead such good lives as “may win and invite the natives of the country to the knowledge and obedience of the only true God and Saviour of mankind, and the Christian faith, — which in our royal intention and the adventurers' free profession is the principal end of this Plantation.” ”

“ RHODE ISLAND AND PROVIDENCE PLANTATION; NEW HAVEN; MAINE; NEW HAMPSHIRE
The early history of the group of colonies which is now to engage the attention is less interesting than that of either Virginia or Massachusetts. There is not the glamour of a first colony as in the case of Virginia; the men were not Pilgrim Fathers in the true sense as in Plymouth; the prosperity of Massachusetts, the rivalries of Maryland, and the Spanish danger in the Carolinas, are all wanting in this portion of New England. ”

“ The troubles between Rhode Island and Massachusetts, between Massachusetts and Connecticut, and between Connecticut and Rhode Island, were thus rapidly approaching the point at which a general intercolonial war might easily have resulted in the annihilation of the smallest colony, and a possible quarrel over the spoils by the two victors, already bitterly quarreling over the spoils of a war of twenty years earlier. ”

“ The few who were really well informed, who had something like as accurate an appreciation of the colony of Massachusetts as they had of the county of Middlesex, were powerless to counteract the general ignorance and the more particular misconception. It was the cherished dream of authority in England to bring the colonies into one common rule under one head in such a way as to strengthen their military force while it lessened their legislative independence. ”

“ Singularly enough, Massachusetts Bay, spite of its exclusive policy, possessed from the very outset a strong charm in the eyes of those who dissented from its formulas. Like the Petit Monsieur who found himself left out of the tapestry which exhibited the story of the Spanish invasion, they longed to work themselves in the hangings of colonial history. They soon swarmed in Boston and Salem; and notwithstanding the banishment of Roger Williams, the “heretics” continued to thrive. ”

“ Massachusetts was the first large colony in New England. Its people were educated, and as a rule of a higher social grade than those of Plymouth. Under a charter which contained many very liberal provisions, a highly organized government was developed, which served as a model to the other colonies, and had a wide influence in the building of a nation founded on the principles of self-government. ”