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Anne Bradstreet and Her Time
CHAPTER XV. - THE PURITAN REIGN OF TERROR.
by Campbell, Helen
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The ten years which followed the death of Governor Winthrop early
in 1649, were years of steady outward prosperity, yet causes were
at work, which gradually complicated the political situation and
prepared the necessity for the explanation which the mother
country at last peremptorily demanded, Simon Bradstreet being
selected as one of the men most capable of suitable reply. So long
as Winthrop lived, his even and sagacious course hindered many
complications which every circumstance fostered. Even in the
fierce dissensions over Anne Hutchinson and her theories, he had
still been able to retain the personal friendship of those whom as
a magistrate he had most severely judged. Wheelwright and
Coddington, who had suffered many losses; Sir Harry Vane, who had
returned to England sore and deeply indignant at the colonial
action; Clark and Williams, bitter as they might be against
Massachusetts principles, had only affection for the gracious and
humane governor, who gave himself as freely as he gave his
fortune, and whose theories, however impracticable they may at
times have seemed, have all justified themselves in later years.
Through the early privations and the attempts of some to escape
the obligations laid upon them, by the mere fact of having come
together to the unknown country, he set his face steadily against
all division, and there is no more characteristic passage in his
Journal than that in which he gives the reasons which should bind
them to common and united action. Various disaffected and uneasy
souls had wandered off to other points, and Winthrop gives the
results, at first quietly and judicially, but rising at the close
to a noble indignation.
"Others who went to other places, upon like grounds, succeeded no
better. They fled for fear of want, and many of them fell into it,
even to extremity, as if they had hastened into the misery which
they feared and fled from, besides the depriving themselves of the
ordinances and church fellowship, and those civil liberties which
they enjoyed here; whereas, such as staid in their places kept
their peace and ease, and enjoyed still the blessing of the
ordinances, and never tasted of those troubles and miseries, which
they heard to have befallen those who departed. Much disputation
there was about liberty of removing for outward advantages, and
all ways were sought for an open door to get out at; but it is to
be feared many crept out at a broken wall. For such as come
together into a wilderness, where are nothing but wild beasts and
beast-like men, and there confederate together in civil and church
estate, whereby they do, implicitly at least, bind themselves to
support each other, and all of them that society, whether civil or
sacred, whereof they are members, how they can break from this
without free consent, is hard to find, so as may satisfy a tender
or good conscience in time of trial. Ask thy conscience, if thou
wouldst have plucked up thy stakes, and brought thy family 3000
miles, if thou hadst expected that all, or most, would have
forsaken thee there. Ask again, what liberty thou hast towards
others, which thou likest not to allow others towards thyself; for
if one may go, another may, and so the greater part, and so church
and commonwealth may be left destitute in a wilderness, exposed to
misery and reproach, and all for thy ease and pleasure, whereas
these all, being now thy brethren, as near to thee as the
Israelites were to Moses, it were much safer for thee after his
example, to choose rather to suffer affliction with thy brethren
than to enlarge thy ease and pleasure by furthering the occasion
of their ruin."
What he demanded of others he gave freely himself, and no long
time was required to prove to all, that union was their only
salvation.
He had lived to see the spirit of co-operation active in many
ways. Churches were quietly doing their work with as little
wrangling over small doctrinal differences as could be expected
from an age in which wrangling was the chief symptom of vitality.
Education had settled upon a basis it has always retained, that of
"universal knowledge at the public cost"; the College was doing
its work so effectually that students came from England itself to
share in her privileges, and justice gave as impartial and even-
handed results as conscientious magistrates knew how to furnish.
The strenuous needs and sacrifices of the early days were over. A
generation had arisen, knowing them only by hearsay, and for even
the humblest, substantial prosperity was the rule. Johnson, in his
"Wonder-Working Providence," wrote words that held no exaggeration
in their description of the comfort which has, from that day to
this, been the characteristic of New England homes. "The Lord hath
been pleased to turn all the wigwams, huts, and hovels the English
dwelt in at their first coming, into orderly, fair, and well-built
houses, well furnished many of them, together with orchards,
filled with goodly fruit-trees, and gardens with variety of
flowers.... There are many hundreds of laboring men, who had not
enough to bring them over, yet now, worth scores, and some,
hundreds of pounds. The Lord whose promises are large to His Sion,
hath blessed his people's provision, and satisfied her poor with
bread, in a very little space. Everything in the country proved a
staple commodity. And those who were formerly forced to fetch most
of the bread they eat, and the beer they drink, a thousand leagues
by sea, are, through the blessing of the Lord, so increased, that
they have not only fed their elder sisters, Virginia, Barbadoes
and many of the Summer Islands, that were preferred before her for
fruitfulness, but also the grandmother of us all, even the fertile
isle of Great Britain."
With such conditions the colonists were happy, and as the work of
their hands prospered, one might have thought that gentler modes of
judgment would have grown with it, and toleration if not welcome
have been given to the few dissenting minds that appeared among
them. Had Winthrop lived, this might have been possible, but the
new generation, fast replacing the early rulers, had their
prejudices but not their experience, and were as fierce opponents
of any new ism as their fathers had been before them, while their
rash action often complicated the slower and more considerate
movements of the elders that remained.
For England the ten years in which the Colony had made itself a
power, had been filled with more and more agitation and distress.
There was little time for attention to anything but their own
difficulties and perplexities, the only glances across seas being
those of distrust and jealousy. Winthrop happily died before the
news of the beheadal of Charles I. had reached New England, and
for a time, Cromwell was too busy with the reduction of Ireland
and the problem of government suddenly thrust upon him, to do
anything but ignore the active life so much after his own heart,
in the new venture of which he had once so nearly become a part.
It is possible that the attitude of New England for a time based
itself on the supposition, that life with them was so thoroughly
in harmony with the Protector's own theories that interference was
impossible. There were men among them, however, who watched his
course warily, and who were not indisposed to follow the example
he had set by revolt against hated institutions, but for the most
part they went their way, quietly reticent and content to wait for
time to demonstrate the truth or error of their convictions. But
for the most there was entire content with the present.
Evidently no hint of a possible and coming Restoration found
slightest credence with them, and thus they laid up a store of
offences for which they were suddenly to be called to account.
When at last the Restoration had been accomplished and Charles II,
whose laughing eyes had held less mockery for William Penn than
any among the representatives of sects he so heartily despised,
turned to question how Quakers had fared in this objectionable and
presumptuous Colony of New England, the answer was not one to
propitiate, or to incline to any favor. The story is not one that
any New Englander will care to dwell upon, even to-day, when
indifference is the rule toward all theological dissension, past
or present. It is certain that had Winthrop lived, matters could
never have reached the extremity they did. It is equally certain
that the non-combatants conquered, though the victory was a bloody
one. Two sides are still taken to-day, even among New England
authorities. For Quakers, there is of course but one, yet in all
their statements there seems to be infinitely less bitterness than
they might reasonably have shown. That one or two wild fanatics
committed actions, which could have no other foundation than
unsettled minds, cannot be denied by even the most uncompromising
advocate of the Quaker side. But they were so evidently the result
of distempered and excited brains, that only a community who held
every inexplicable action to result from the direct influence of
Satan, could have done anything but pass them by in silent
forbearance.
Had John Cotton been alive in the year in which the Quakers chose
Boston as their working ground, his gentle and conciliating
nature, shown so fully in the trial of Anne Hutchinson, would have
found some means of reconciling their theories with such phases of
the Puritan creed as were in sympathy with them. But a far
different mind held his place, and had become the leading minister
in the Colony. John Norton, who had taken Nathaniel Ward's place
at Ipswich, was called after twenty years of service, to the
Boston church, and his melancholy temperament and argumentative,
not to say pragmatical turn of mind, made him ready to seize upon
the first cause of offence.
News of the doings of the obnoxious sect in England had been fully
discussed in the Colony, and the law passed as a means of
protection against the heresies of Anne Hutchinson and her school,
and which had simply waited new opportunity for its execution,
came into exercise sooner than they had expected.
It is difficult to re-create for our own minds, the state of
outraged susceptibility--of conviction that Jehovah in person had
received the extremity of insult from every one who dared to go
outside the fine points for a system of belief, which filled the
churches in 1656. The "Inward Light" struck every minister upon
whose ears the horrid words fell, as only less shocking than
witchcraft or any other light amusement of Satan, and a day of
public humiliation had already been appointed by the General
Court, "to seek the face of God in behalf of our native country,
in reference to the abounding of errors, especially those of the
Ranters and Quakers."
The discussion of their offences was in full height, when in July,
1656, there sailed into Boston harbor a ship from the Barbadoes,
in which were two Quaker women, Mary Fisher and Anne Austin.
Never were unwelcome visitors met by a more formidable delegation.
Down to the wharf posted Governor and Deputy-Governor, four
principal Magistrates, with a train of yeoman supplemented by half
the population of Boston, who faced the astonished master of the
vessel with orders which forced him to give bonds to carry the
women back to the point from whence they came. This might have
seemed sufficient, but was by no means considered so. The unhappy
women were ordered to goal till the return of the vessel; a few
books brought with them were burned by the executioner, and from
every pulpit in the Colony came fierce denunciations of the
intruders.
They left, and the excitement was subsiding a little when a
stronger occasion for terror presented itself in another vessel,
this time from England, bearing eight more of the firebrands, four
men and four women, besides a zealous convert made on the way from
Long Island, where the vessel had stopped for a short time. Eleven
weeks of imprisonment did not silence the voices of these self-
elected missionaries, and the uncompromising character of their
utterances ought to have commended them to a people who had been
driven out of England for the identical cause. A people who had
fallen to such depths of frenzied fanaticism as to drive cattle
and swine into churches and cathedrals and baptize them with mock
solemnity, who had destroyed or mutilated beyond repair organs,
fonts, stained glass and every article of priestly use or
adornment, might naturally have looked with understanding and
sympathetic eyes on the women who, made desperate by suffering,
turned upon them and pronounced their own preachers, "hirelings,
Baals, and seed of the serpent."
The Quakers frowned upon Church music, but not before the Puritan
Prynne had written of choirs: "Choirsters bellow the tenor as it
were oxen; bark a counterpart, as it were a kennel of dogs; roar
out a treble, as it were a sort of bulls; and grunt a bass, as it
were a number of hogs." They arraigned bishops, but in words less
full of bitterness, than those in which one of the noblest among
Puritan leaders of thought, recorded his conviction. Milton,
writing of all bishops: "They shall be thrown down eternally, into
the darkest and deepest gulf of hell the trample and spurn of all
the other damned ... and shall exercise a raving and bestial
tyranny over them ... they shall remain in that plight forever, the
basest, the lowermost, the most dejected and down-trodden vassels
of perdition."
No word from the most fanatical Quaker who ever appeared before
tribunal of man, exceeded this, or thousands of similar declarations,
from men as ready for martyrdom as those they judged, and
as obstinately bent upon proving their creed the only one that
reasonable human beings should hold. The wildest alarm seized
upon not only Massachusetts but each one of the confederated
colonies. The General Court passed a series of laws against
them, by which ship-masters were fined a hundred pounds if a
Quaker was brought over by them, as well as forced to give
security for the return of all to the point from whence they came.
They enacted, also, that all Quakers who entered the Colony from
any point should "be forthwith committed to the House of
Correction, and at their entrance to be severely whipped, and by
the master thereof to be kept constantly to work, and none
suffered to converse or speak with them during the time of their
imprisonment."
No Quaker book could be imported, circulated or concealed, save on
penalty of a fine of five pounds, and whoever should venture to
defend the new opinions, paid for the first offence a fine of two
pounds; for the second, double that amount and for the third,
imprisonment in the House of Correction till there should "be
convenient passage for them to be sent out of the land."
Through the streets of Boston went the crier with his drum,
publishing the law which was instantly violated by an indignant
citizen, one Nicholas Upsall, who, for "reproaching the honored
Magistrates, and speaking against the law made and published
against Quakers," not only once but with a continuous and
confounding energy, was sentenced to pay a fine of twenty pounds,
and "to depart the jurisdiction within one month, not to return,
under the penalty of imprisonment."
Then came a period in which fines, imprisonments, whippings and
now and then a cropping of ears, failed to lessen the numbers who
came, with full knowledge of what the consequences must be, and
who behaved themselves with the aggressiveness of those bent upon
martyrdom. More and more excited by daily defiance, penalties were
doubled, the fine for harboring a Quaker being increased to forty
shillings an hour, and the excitement rising to higher and higher
point. Could they but have looked upon the insane freaks of some
of their visitors with the same feeling which rose in the
Mohammedan mind, there would have been a different story for both
sides. Dr. Palfrey describes the Turk's method, which only a Turk,
however, could have carried out: "Prompted by that superstitious
reverence which he (the Turk) was educated to pay to lunatics, as
persons inspired, he received these visitors with deferential and
ceremonious observance, and with a prodigious activity of
genuflections and salams, bowed them out of his country. They
could make nothing of it, and in that quarter gave up their
enterprise in despair."
The General Court was the despairing body at this time. Months had
passed, and severity had simply multiplied the numbers to be dealt
with. But one remedy remained to be tried, a remedy against which
Simon Bradstreet's voice is said to have been the only one raised,
and the General Court, following the advice of Endicott and
Norton, passed the vote which is still one of the darkest blots on
the old records--
"Whereas, there is an accursed and pernicious sect of heretics
lately risen up in the world who are commonly called Quakers, who
take upon them to be immediately sent of God and infallibly
assisted; who do speak and write blasphemous things, despising
government and the order of God in church and commonwealth,
speaking evil of dignities, reproaching and reviling magistrates
and the ministers of the Gospel, seeking to turn the people from
the faith, and to gain proselytes to their pernicious ways; and
whereas the several jurisdictions have made divers laws to
prohibit and restrain the aforesaid cursed heretics from coming
amongst them, yet notwithstanding they are not deterred thereby,
but arrogantly and presumptuously do press into several of the
jurisdictions, and there vent their pernicious and devilish
opinions, which being permitted, tends manifestly to the
disturbance of our peace, the withdrawing of the hearts of the
people from their subjection to government, and so in issue to
cause division and ruin if not timely prevented; it is therefore
propounded and seriously commended to the several General Courts,
upon the considerations aforesaid, to make a law that all such
Quakers formerly convicted and punished as such, shall (if they
return again) be imprisoned, and forthwith banished or expelled
out of the said jurisdiction, under pain of death; and if
afterwards they presume to come again into that jurisdiction, then
to be put to death as presumptuously incorrigible, unless they
shall plainly and publicly renounce their cursed opinions; and for
such Quakers as shall come into any jurisdiction from any foreign
parts, or such as shall arise within the same, after due
conviction that either he or she is of that cursed sect of
heretics, they be banished under pain of severe corporal
punishment; and if they return again, then to be punished
accordingly, and banished under pain of death; and if afterwards
they shall yet presume to come again, then to be put to death as
aforesaid, except they do then and there plainly and publicly
renounce their said cursed opinions and devilish tenets."
This was not the first time that death had been named as the
penalty against any who returned after banishment, and it had
proved effectual in keeping away many malcontents. But the Quakers
were of different stuff, the same determined temper which had made
the Puritan submit to any penalty rather than give up his faith,
being the common possession of both.
In an address made to the King, partly aggressive partly
apologetic in tone, the wretched story sums itself up in a single
paragraph: "Twenty-two have been banished upon pain of death.
Three have been martyred, and three have had their right ears cut.
One hath been burned in the hand with the letter H. Thirty-one
persons have received six hundred and fifty stripes. One was beat
while his body was like a jelly. Several were beat with pitched
ropes. Five appeals made to England were denied by the rulers of
Boston. One thousand, forty-four pounds' worth of goods hath been
taken from them (being poor men) for meeting together in the fear
of the Lord, and for keeping the commands of Christ. One now lieth
in iron fetters condemned to die."
That Massachusetts felt herself responsible for not only her own
safety but that of her allies, and that this safety appeared to be
menaced by a people who recognized few outward laws, was the only
palliation of a course which in time showed itself as folly, even
to the most embittered. The political consequences were of a
nature, of which in their first access of zeal, they had taken no
account. The complaints and appeals of the Quakers had at last
produced some effect, and there was well-grounded apprehension
that the sense of power which had brought the Colony to act with
the freedom of an independent state, might result in the loss of
some of their most dearly-prized privileges. The Quakers had
conquered, and the magistrates suddenly became conscious that such
strength as theirs need never have dreaded the power of this
feeble folk, and that their institutions could never fall before
an attack from any hands save those of the King himself, toward
whom they now turned with an alarmed deprecation. The Puritan
reign of terror for New England was over, its story to this
generation seeming as incredible as it is shameful. Brutality is
not quite dead even to-day, but there is cause for rejoicing that,
for America at least, freedom of conscience can never again mean
whipping, branding and torturing of unnamable sorts for tender
women and even children. Puritan and Quaker have sunk old
differences, but it is the Quaker who, while ignoring some phases
of a past in which neither present as calm an expression to the
world as should be the portion of the infallibility claimed
tacitly by both sides, is still able to write:
"The mission of the Puritans was almost a complete failure. Their
plan of government was repudiated, and was succeeded by more
humane laws and wiser political arrangements. Their religion,
though it long retained its hold in theory, was replaced by one
less bigoted and superstitious. It is now a thing of the past, a
mere tradition, an antiquated curiosity. The early Quakers, or
some of them, in common with the Puritans, may illustrate some of
the least attractive characteristics of their times; but they were
abreast, if not in advance, of the foremost advocates of religious
and civil freedom. They were more than advocates--they were the
pioneers, who, by their heroic fortitude, patient suffering and
persistent devotion, rescued the old Bay Colony from the jaws of
the certain death to which the narrow and mistaken policy of the
bigoted and sometimes insincere founders had doomed it. They
forced them to abandon pretentious claims, to admit strangers
without insulting them, to tolerate religious differences, and to
incorporate into their legislation the spirit of liberty which is
now the life-blood of our institutions. The religion of the
Society of Friends is still an active force, having its full share
of influence upon our civilization. The vital principle--'The
Inward Light'--scoffed at and denounced by the Puritans as a
delusion, is recognized as a profound spiritual truth by sages and
philosophers."
Through it all, though Simon Bradstreet's name occurs often in the
records of the Court, it is usually as asking some question
intended to divert attention if possible from the more aggressive
phases of the examination, and sooth the excited feelings of
either side. But naturally his sympathies were chiefly with his
own party, and his wife would share his convictions. There is no
surprise, therefore, in finding him numbered by the Quakers as
among those most bitterly against them.
It is certain that Simon Bradstreet plead for moderation, but some
of the Quaker offences were such as would most deeply wound his
sense of decorum, and from the Quaker standpoint he is numbered
among the worst persecutors.
In "New England Judged by the Spirit of the Lord," a prominent
Quaker wrote: "Your high-priest, John Norton, and Simon
Bradstreet, one of your magistrates, ... were deeply concerned in
the Blood of the Innocents and their cruel sufferings, the one
as advising, the other as acting," and he writes at another:
point "Simon Bradstreet, a man hardened in Blood and a cruel
persecutor."
There is a curious suggestiveness in another count of the same
indictment. "Simon Bradstreet and William Hathorn aforesaid were
Assistant to Denison in these executions, whose Names I Record to
Rot and Stink as of you all to all Generations, unto whom this
shall be left as a perpetual Record of your Everlasting Shame."
William Hathorn had an unwholesome interest in all sorrow and
catastrophe, the shadow of these evil days descending to the
representative Nathanael Hawthorne, whose pen has touched Puritan
weaknesses and Puritan strength, with a power no other has ever
held, but the association was hardly more happy for Bradstreet
then, than at a later day when an economical Hathorn bundled him
out of his tomb to make room for his own bones.
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