Charles Kendall Adams

First Lord Baltimore.

39. The First Lord Baltimore.—Among the most important counsellors of James I. was his Secretary of State, George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore,^[30] who had been connected with both the London and Plymouth Companies. His interest in colonial matters was such that he obtained a patent for a colony in Newfoundland; but the enterprise failed in spite of his personal efforts (1621). Later he tried to get a footing in Virginia with some of his fellow-religionists (for he was a stanch Roman Catholic); but the Protestant settlers would not have them (1629). Then he secured a charter from King Charles I. for a tract which, although north of the Potomac River, was within the original bounds of Virginia. The new province was named Maryland, after Queen Henrietta Maria. Lord Baltimore died before he could utilize his grant; but his son, Cecilius Calvert, inherited it and became almost a feudal sovereign in the new region. He could declare war, appoint all officers, and confer titles. The freemen of the colony were to assist him in making laws which required no supervision in England; and the colonists were granted an unprecedented amount of religious liberty.

40. The Growth of Maryland.—In November, 1633, Leonard Calvert, brother of Cecilius, crossed the ocean with two hundred colonists, and the next year the town of St. Mary’s was founded. Trouble soon arose with a prominent Virginian, William Claiborne, who had previously established a colony on Kent Island, within Baltimore’s jurisdiction. Claiborne was finally expelled, and the colonists, although many of them were Protestants, settled down peacefully. Disputes, however, soon arose with Cecilius Calvert over laws which the freemen insisted on passing; but no serious trouble occurred until the Civil War broke out in England. Then the Protestants gained the upper hand, and in 1645 Leonard Calvert was forced to flee to Virginia. He soon returned, however, and governed until his death, in 1647. After this, considerable confusion ensued; and when Virginia had been secured for the Parliamentarians (§ 42), Claiborne, who had cherished his grievances, compelled Governor Stone of Maryland to renounce his allegiance to Lord Baltimore. When Stone repudiated this agreement, Claiborne, who was a parliamentary commissioner, with the aid of an armed force deposed him, and Maryland passed under the control of the Protestants, who would not allow Roman Catholics to vote or hold office. Cromwell, however, forbade interference with the rights of the Second Lord Baltimore, and Stone, the latter’s legal representative, endeavored to overthrow the Puritan government of the colony, but was defeated in a battle at Providence in 1655. Two years later, Baltimore, through the favor of the English Parliamentarians, recovered his proprietorship and obtained control of Maryland, after a compromise had been made with the Puritan colonists and their Virginia abettors. Greater privileges were granted to the freemen, and there was a general religious toleration. Then followed the excellent administration for fourteen years (1661–1675) of Charles Calvert, the eldest son of Cecilius, who at the end of that period became the third Lord Baltimore. During his governorship many Quakers and foreign immigrants were attracted to the colony, which produced fine crops, notably of tobacco.

41. Revolts of Fendall and Coode.—In 1681 there was a slight revolt, led by a demagogue named Josias Fendall, who had previously been treacherous to the proprietor. He was aided by John Coode, a retired clergyman, and by some Virginians. The uprising was easily put down and would not have made headway had not the people been disturbed by an unpopular local law about the suffrage and by religious and economic legislation in England (§ 43). Another revolt in 1689, led by Coode, was more successful. But in two years the revolutionists were driven from power, and Maryland was made a royal province, the proprietor becoming merely a landlord.^[31]

DEVELOPMENT OF VIRGINIA.

42. Virginia under Berkeley’s First Administration.—We have seen that the royalist governor, Harvey, caused the Virginians at first to regret the gentle rule of the London Company. In 1639, however, Sir Francis Wyatt succeeded Harvey, and affairs began to improve. Three years later, Sir William Berkeley began his long and checkered career as the king’s representative. He was a brave, well-educated gentleman, but full of passions and prejudices that often brought him into conflict with the colonists. His opposition to all efforts to make the colonial government more liberal was intense. He disliked Roman Catholics and hated Puritans; hence such followers of Baltimore and such New Englanders as happened to enter Virginia’s borders, were soon made uncomfortable, as were also the Indians, who were vigorously put down in 1644. Berkeley and most of the Virginians sympathized with Charles I. in his struggle against Parliament to such an extent that after the death of that monarch the governor invited Charles II. to come to America. Charles was too wise to accept, but several thousand cavaliers did come, and thus the colony waxed strong.^[32] Parliament did not fail, however, to assert its supremacy. It appointed, as its commissioners, William Claiborne, who had played such a disturbing part in Maryland affairs and was an enterprising trader, and Richard Bennett, a man of prominence and excellent character. It also sent a frigate to the Chesapeake; and with no struggle Berkeley was superseded in 1652 by Bennett, who was elected by the Burgesses. He and his successors ruled well, on the whole, and the colony prospered.

43. Virginia under Berkeley’s Second Administration.—With the Restoration in 1660, Berkeley, who had been living quietly on his estate, was recalled, and then a period of disturbance set in. Severe measures against the Puritans alienated them. Enforcement of the Navigation Act, which compelled colonists to ship tobacco to English ports alone and to receive European goods only from vessels loaded in England, bore heavily on all classes. Then again, Charles II.’s grant of the province to two of his dissolute courtiers, Lords Arlington and Culpepper, naturally caused indignation. At the same time the bad condition of the church in the colony, and the corruption of the public officials, called for correction. The Puritans tried to revolt in 1663, but were suppressed, and matters grew worse. Berkeley became despotic and refused to call a new House of Burgesses, the old House elected in 1660 holding over and actually passing a law restricting the suffrage under which new elections would be held. To crown all, the Indians began to murder frontier settlers; but the governor, who feared printing presses and schools, feared the native militia also, and would not allow them to attack the savages.

44. Bacon’s Rebellion.—At this juncture, Nathaniel Bacon, a young member of the council, brave, honest, and hot-headed, raised, without orders, a private force and defeated the Indians (1676). Berkeley resented this unauthorized action and declared Bacon and his followers rebels. For several months a petty civil war went on, good fortune being with Bacon, who drove Berkeley out of Jamestown, and burned the place. The revolt would not have reached such dimensions had not the general situation been intolerable; but it was bound to be practically local, whatever may have been Bacon’s schemes for a general colonial uprising against the Crown. Even as a local movement it was soon ended, for Bacon’s premature death (October, 1676), whether from poison or fever, left no one to oppose Berkeley. The latter returned to power and continued his tyrannical course, executing no less than twenty-three of the leading rebels. This disgusted Charles II., who had shown much mildness toward his rebellious subjects in Great Britain. So Berkeley was recalled to England in 1677, and died there shortly after in disgrace.

45. Berkeley’s Successors.—The Virginians hailed his departure with bonfires; but in spite of his faults, Berkeley’s career is a pathetic one. He had not moved with the times. His successors in office, on the other hand, moved too fast, for they imitated the corruption of the court at London and overawed the colonists in addition to taking money from them. There were six of these governors in twenty-one years. They quarreled with the Burgesses and kept the colonists in a ferment of riots and hangings; yet the population grew, and some progress was made. A new capital was established at Williamsburg, and the College of William and Mary was founded there in 1692 by Rev. James Blair.

DEVELOPMENT OF NEW ENGLAND.

46. The Progress of Massachusetts.—Although the colony of Massachusetts Bay had a most vigorous start, it was not without its troubles from the beginning. The governor’s “assistants” soon tried to concentrate power in their own hands, but the freemen (who, by law, must be church members) resisted, and a representative house was inaugurated. Voting by ballot was introduced in 1634, but it was not until ten years later that the administration of affairs was thoroughly organized under a governor and two houses. The migration of such leading Puritans as Sir Henry Vane the younger,^[33] and the proposed coming of others, did not serve to put down the democratic tendencies of the colony, which was daily increasing in population and wealth, much of the latter being due to the fisheries and the coasting trade. As a rule, the colonists were of the educated middle class, thoroughly religious and devoted to their pastors, many of whom were very able men. One of these clergymen, John Harvard,^[34] by means of a legacy and the gift of his library, assured the founding of the first college in the country, which has since grown into the great university at Cambridge that bears his name.

47. Troubles between Massachusetts and the Crown.—Meanwhile persons who had been driven out for not conforming with the ideas of church and religion held by the majority of the citizens of Massachusetts, had complained to Archbishop Laud, and that prelate and other councilors had passed laws for securing religious uniformity, obviously aimed at Massachusetts. The colony was soon up in arms, but dispatched Edward Winslow to England to try first the force of pleading. The breaking up of the Plymouth Company complicated matters, and after legal proceedings the colony’s charter was declared null and void. The colonists silently refused, however, to surrender their charter, and were saved from further external trouble, for a time, by the civil turmoils in England itself.

48. Domestic Difficulties.—Internal troubles beset them also, for they were as determined as their persecutors to have religious uniformity of their own kind. They drove out the noble pastor of Salem, Roger Williams, because he was opposed to giving political power to church members only. They disliked, moreover, his advocacy of liberal principles of toleration, as well as his theories limiting the king’s power to grant lands in America. Williams escaped in the winter of 1636, thanks partly to the kindness of Indians, to whom he was always a friend; in the spring of the same year he founded Providence Plantation on Narragansett Bay. Then Massachusetts was thrown into a ferment by a Mrs. Anne Hutchinson, who preached certain theological doctrines distasteful to the mass of the Puritans, although agreeable to some of their leading ministers. In 1637 she was banished; whereupon some of her adherents betook themselves to the island of Aquidneck, afterward called Rhode Island, where she subsequently joined them. The affair seems ridiculous now, but it disturbed the colony and marked the beginning of a tyrannical policy of repression that had evil results (§ 55).

49. Foundation of Rhode Island.—This intolerance led, however, to the more rapid settlement of New England, and was thus in part a power for good. The Hutchinsonians founded a town which they called Portsmouth, and thither, as well as to Providence, many discontented people flocked from Massachusetts, both settlements receiving bad names in consequence. In 1639 Newport was founded by Portsmouth people who dissented from Mrs. Hutchinson; but the next year the two towns united to form the colony of Rhode Island. In 1644 all the towns in the region joined to form the colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, under a charter obtained by Roger Williams from the Parliamentarians. A separate charter was later obtained by a faction for Newport and Portsmouth; but finally, in 1654, the single colony was restored under Williams. It was a home of toleration, and as such reflects credit upon Roger Williams, its founder; but it was for a long time a home also of fanatics of all sorts.

50. The Connecticut Settlements.—Meanwhile settlements had been made by Massachusetts men^[35] on the Connecticut River (1635), which angered the powerful Pequot Indians and drove them to war. The Narragansetts were kept from the war-path by the entreaties of Roger Williams, but the Pequots were strong enough to harass the Connecticut towns of Hartford, Windsor, Saybrook, and Weathersfield. The Connecticut settlers appealed for aid to Massachusetts and Plymouth. A small army was raised which, under Captains John Mason and John Underhill, stormed the Indian village and almost exterminated the tribe (1637).

51. Free Government in Connecticut.—For a short time Connecticut owed allegiance to Massachusetts, but independence was assured in 1639. The people adopted a written constitution, liberal in its terms. This was the first of its kind in America, and was chiefly the work of Rev. Thomas Hooker of Hartford. In 1638 a colony was founded at New Haven by a congregation of Englishmen under Theophilus Eaton and John Davenport. Other congregations, all ultra-Puritanic, formed towns around, which were at first independent, but afterward united with New Haven. The new colony was weak, however, and was finally joined to Connecticut in 1665.

52. Evolution of New England.—Four years previously Massachusetts had absorbed the last of the towns founded in the colony of Maine, which Sir Ferdinando Gorges, a prominent member of the Plymouth Company, had been endeavoring to develop since 1622. The colony of towns planted on the Piscataqua under the grant made by the Plymouth Company to John Mason in 1629, which afterward became known as New Hampshire, was incorporated with Massachusetts by 1643.^[36] Thus one by one the New England colonies were being evolved and developed, Massachusetts, however, retaining her primacy. While local differences were soon to be detected, the people of the entire region were one in their main characteristics. They were religious after the Puritan fashion. They were brave and enterprising in extending their borders and their influence. They were thrifty and resolute in extracting wealth from their rugged soil and their storm-tossed waters.

THE NEW ENGLAND CONFEDERACY.

53. Formation of the Confederacy.—Similarity of habits, union of interests, and contiguity of territory naturally led the New England colonies early to think of establishing some form of political union. In 1637 the Connecticut people, who were menaced by the Dutch on the one hand and by the French Canadians and Indians on the other, made overtures for union to the people of Massachusetts. The latter were indifferent, but the proposition was renewed in 1639 and in 1643, and was acted upon favorably in the latter year. One reason for the final success of the movement for union was the belief that the civil turmoil in England might react on this side of the Atlantic, especially if the illiberal king should win. Accordingly, in 1643 a written constitution bound the colonies of Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven in a “perpetual league of friendship and amity for offense and defense,” under the name of “The United Colonies of New England.” Each colony was independent in local matters, and each contributed two members to a commission which determined such large matters of common interest as declaring war, forming leagues, etc. In case of disagreement among the commissioners, questions were to be decided by the legislatures of the colonies.

54. The Work of the Confederacy.—The Confederacy thus established lasted theoretically forty-one years, but was really efficient only during the first twenty. The chief difficulty it had to contend with was the disproportionate burden laid upon Massachusetts, which had but one vote and yet was more heavily taxed in men and money than any other member of the league. This led to friction, but in the main, Massachusetts, being stronger than the other colonies, succeeded in directing the general policy. This was on the whole exclusive, since the people of Rhode Island and Maine were not allowed to enter the league. There was a curious disregard of England’s wishes in the matter of such a combination of dependent colonies, but at that time England had enough to do in looking after herself. Massachusetts was particularly jealous of English interference, and did not even proclaim the Protectorate of so stanch a Puritan as Cromwell. The Confederacy need not, indeed, have attracted much notice, for the commissioners acted mainly as a committee to look after the general prosperity of the colonies. But Massachusetts showed not a little boldness in passing laws against the raising of troops in the interest of King Charles. There was also, as was to be expected, quite a show of religious independence. The Presbyterians, although for a short time triumphant in England, were not so fortunate in Massachusetts; for in 1648 a synod was held at Cambridge, which defined and established a Congregational system, the principles of which have been strong in New England ever since, and have played an important part in the evolution of American democracy.

55. Trouble with the Dutch.—Meanwhile the settlers in New Haven and Connecticut came into unpleasant relations with the Dutch at New Amsterdam, on account of settlements pushed out in the direction of the latter. When England and Holland went to war in 1652, the Connecticut colonies tried to make the other members of the Confederacy engage in hostilities with the Dutch in America, but Massachusetts resisted. Cromwell sent over a fleet to Boston, which only partially succeeded in coercing Massachusetts; but before the eight hundred New Englanders gathered to attack New Amsterdam could be utilized, news came that England and Holland had made peace. Another instance of local troubles between Connecticut and Massachusetts was due to a war of trade duties between the two colonies, which came near breaking down the union. Still another cause of commotion was the arrival in Massachusetts of a few members of the newly established society of Friends, or Quakers, who astonished the staid citizens by their extravagant opposition to the state religion. Some laws were passed against them, and four were actually hanged on Boston Common. Plymouth and New Haven also treated them harshly, but Connecticut indulged in little persecution, and Rhode Island in none at all.

56. Dissolution of the New England Confederacy.—The practical breaking up of the Confederacy followed the restoration of Charles II., and was due to the fact that the king suspected that the colonies wished to separate completely from England. They had been slow to recognize his supremacy, and had harbored two of the judges that had condemned his father. At first Massachusetts managed to stave off the crisis; but in 1664 the king sent over four royal commissioners to investigate colonial affairs. After conquering the Dutch port of New Amsterdam, with the aid of Connecticut and of the troops they brought over, the commissioners quarreled with the people of Massachusetts with regard to their charter. The General Court of the colony evaded giving an answer to the king’s demands, and his agents returned home, having accomplished little. Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Plymouth were more submissive, and the first named was rewarded with a liberal charter and with the annexation of New Haven. This interference of the king with American affairs greatly weakened the Confederacy; besides, the new generation that was growing up probably did not feel the same alienation from England that their fathers had felt.

57. King Philip’s War.—Meanwhile there had been trouble with the Indians, although the New Englanders had treated them better than any of the other colonists had done—a fact strikingly exemplified in the life work of the Apostle John Eliot, who translated the Bible into a written language rather unskillfully invented for them by himself. Troubles arose in connection with Alexander and Philip, two sons of Massasoit, the friendly chief of the Pokanokets. Alexander died at Plymouth, and Philip thought the colonists had poisoned him; hence he planned a general Indian uprising, making his headquarters on Mount Hope, a peninsula running into Narragansett Bay. After many fiendish outrages had been committed on towns in Plymouth and Massachusetts, the federal commissioners enlisted a volunteer army. In December, 1675, this army attacked a palisaded fort of the Indians at what is now South Kingston, Rhode Island, and slew about one thousand warriors, half the force within the walls. Philip still continued the struggle; but the following August he was killed, to the great rejoicing of the whole of New England; for the two years’ war, since known as King Philip’s War (1675–1676), had been a frightful experience.

58. Loss of Massachusetts’ Charter.—Their own king was now to give the people of Massachusetts further trouble. Massachusetts, by extending her dominion over New Hampshire and Maine, had involved herself in disputes with the proprietors of those colonies; Church of England people were enraged at the fact that she would not tolerate their form of religious service or give them the suffrage; she was also charged with violating the navigation laws. Aggrieved at these things, Charles made New Hampshire a royal province in 1679; but his governor proved a tyrant, the people rebelled, and in six years the sway of Massachusetts was resumed. Control of Maine was lost for three years (1665–1668), but later on Massachusetts shrewdly purchased the rights of the proprietors over it. Charles intended to give Maine to his son, the Duke of Monmouth, so he had an additional pretext for demanding that Massachusetts should make a fair answer to all his complaints—a course of action which the General Court of the colony continued to evade. In 1684, weary of the evasions of Massachusetts, he caused the old trading charter to be annulled.

Sir Edmund Andros.