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Page 40
[2] Boston Harbor is here referred to.
[3] The place was alterward called Newtown, and is now Cambridge.
HOW THE BAY COLONY DIFFERED FROM PLYMOUTH
BY JOHN G. PALFREY[1]
The emigration of the Englishmen who settled at Plymouth had been
prompted by religious dissent. In what manner Robinson, who was
capable of speculating on political tendencies, or Brewster, whose
early position had compelled him to observe them, had augured
concerning the prospect of public affairs in their native country, no
record tells; while the rustics of the Scrooby congregation, who fled
from a government which denied them liberty in their devotions, could
have had but little knowledge and no agency in the political sphere.
The case was widely different with the founders of the Colony of
Massachusetts Bay. That settlement had its rise in a state of things
in England which associated religion and politics in an intimate
alliance....
Winthrop, then forty-two years old, was descended from a family of
good condition, long seated at Groton, in Suffolk, where he had a
property of six or seven hundred pounds a year, the equivalent of at
least two thousand pounds at the present day. His father was a lawyer
and magistrate. Commanding uncommon respect and confidence from an
early age, he had moved in the circles where the highest matters of
English policy were discust, by men who had been associates of
Whitgift, Bacon, Essex, and Cecil. Humphrey was "a gentleman of
special parts, of learning and activity, and a godly man"; in the home
of his father-in-law, Thomas, third earl of Lincoln, the head in that
day of the now ducal house of Newcastle, he had been the familiar
companion of the patriotic nobles.
Of the assistants, Isaac Johnson, esteemed the richest of the
emigrants, was another son-in-law of Lord Lincoln, and a landholder in
three counties. Sir Richard Saltonstall of Halifax, in Yorkshire, was
rich enough to be a bountiful contributor to the company's operations.
Thomas Dudley, with a company of volunteers which he had raised, had
served, thirty years before, under Henry IV of France; since which
time he had managed the estates of the Earl of Lincoln. He was old
enough to have lent a shrill voice to the huzzas at the defeat of the
armada, and his military services had indoctrinated him in the lore of
civil and religious freedom. Theophilus Eaton, an eminent London
merchant, was used to courts and had been minister of Charles I in
Denmark. Simon Bradstreet, the son of a Non-conformist minister in
Lincolnshire, and a grandson of "a Suffolk gentleman of a fine
estate," had studied at Emanuel College, Cambridge. William Vassall
was an opulent West India proprietor. "The principal planters of
Massachusetts," says the prejudiced Chalmers, "were English country
gentlemen of no inconsiderable fortunes; of enlarged understandings,
improved by liberal education; of extensive ambition, concealed under
the appearance of religious humility."
But it is not alone from what we know of the position, character, and
objects of those few members of the Massachusetts Company who were
proposing to emigrate at the early period now under our notice, that
we are to estimate the power and the purposes of that important
corporation. It had been rapidly brought into the form which it now
bore, by the political exigencies of the age. Its members had no less
in hand than a wide religious and political reform--whether to be
carried out in New England, or in Old England, or in both, it was for
circumstances, as they should unfold themselves, to determine. The
leading emigrants to Massachusetts were of that brotherhood of men
who, by force of social consideration as well as of the intelligence
and resolute patriotism, molded the public opinion and action of
England in the first half of the seventeenth century. While the large
part stayed at home to found, as it proved, the short-lived English
republic, and to introduce elements into the English Constitution
which had to wait another half-century for their secure reception,
another part devoted themselves at once to the erection of free
institutions in this distant wilderness.
In an important sense the associates of the Massachusetts Company were
builders of the British, as well as of the New England, commonwealth.
Some ten or twelve of them, including Cradock, the Governor, served in
the Long Parliament. Of the four commoners of that Parliament
distinguished by Lord Clarendon as first in influence, Vane had been
governor of the company, and Hampden, Pym, and Fiennes--all patentees
of Connecticut--if not members, were constantly consulted upon its
affairs. The latter statement is also true of the Earl of Warwick, the
Parliament's admiral, and of those excellent persons, Lord Say and
Sele and Lord Brooke, both of whom at one time proposed to emigrate.
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