However consistent this draconian policy may have been with Puritan views, Governor Endecott and the General Court realized that it was suspect by the Restoration court of Charles II, and in a long, eloquent appeal to the king for the continuation of their chartered privileges they included an explanatory passage on the treatment of the Quakers. The colony had acted in self-defense. The Quakers were such “malignant & assiduous promoters of doctrines directly tending to subvert both our churches & state…[that] wee were at last constreined, for our oune safety, to passe a sentence of bannishment … upon paine of death.” The executed Quakers had died not because of their seditious crimes or their blasphemous sins but because of their “breaking in upon us, notwithstanding theire sentence of bannishment made knoune to them.” They had died, in effect, by “theire oune act … bringing theire blood on theire oune head.”
But though the Crown was willing to tolerate the colony’s charter, it could not concede the power of life and death or concur in this degree of intolerance. Orders were sent from London to stop the executions and return the condemned to England.24
Punishments, however, continued. Recidivist Quakers were to be tied half naked to a cart’s tail and whipped from town to town until out of the colony, and upon successive returns to be branded on the shoulder. (In New Haven they were to be branded on the hand.) So three women in Maine—“vagabond Quakers”—were whipped, bleeding, through several miles of knee-deep snow. Women who appeared in church in sackcloth, their faces smeared with ashes (“the greatest and most amazing uproar that I ever saw”—Samuel Sewell), were frantically suppressed; and men who interrupted sermons by smashing bottles together in symbolic demonstration of the Puritans’ ultimate demise were dragged off to prison by the hair. But the suppression could not long survive the advice of the royal commission of 1664, that the Quakers should be allowed to “pass about their lawful occasions.”
Gradually the fury slackened, and by 1674 the sect was able to establish a regular meeting in Boston itself, despite bitter protests. At the end of the century, Cotton Mather could look back indulgently on his grandparents’ fury against the Quakers. He agreed that the first generation of Quakers had been “Madmen, a sort of Lunaticks, Daemoniacks and Energumens,” fitter for a madhouse than a gallows; but in time they would have “come to nothing if the Civil Magistrate had not inflicted any Civil Penalty upon them.” It would have been enough, he thought, if, as a Plymouth councilor had proposed, they had been forced to have their Heads Shaved—a “Capital” punishment to be sure (Mather could not resist the pun) that “would have both Sham’d and Cur’d them.”25
4
But if the Quakers constituted an effective assault from without on the establishment of New England’s Puritanism, changes from within—erosion, disillusion, and the lure of opportunities abroad and of more worldly goals—had a greater, more transformative effect. As the region’s life settled into stable forms the tensions within Puritanism became increasingly difficult to maintain; the lure of exile dimmed when escape was no longer necessary and return was safe and beguiling, and when commercial prospects in a burgeoning Atlantic world became clear.
IN THE STRUGGLE TO maintain Puritanism’s inner balances, the sufferings of the pious merchant Robert Keayne—that frenetic product of London’s spiritually burnt-over inner city—and the turmoils of the country-bred perfectionist Roger Williams were opposite ends of the same spectrum. Both were profoundly pious, but the one could not maintain the delicate balance of pressures within the system; the other would not. Both became pariahs, the one condemned for avarice, the other for an excess of zeal.
Keayne, as devoted to his spiritual life as to his business dealings, had quickly established his religious and commercial credentials after his arrival in 1635. Within a few months, he was received into the communion of Boston’s first church and soon thereafter, while perfecting both his economic and spiritual bookkeeping, he resumed his practice of keeping detailed notes on the sermons he heard, especially those of Cotton, and recording certain of the church’s proceedings. Three volumes of his sermon notes, covering the years 1638–46, survive and are testimonials to the passion of his religious life. He was, it seemed, the soul of integrity and Christian charity. As his business success increased, so too did his gifts to the public. He contributed generously to the building of Boston’s fort and laid aside a regular percentage of his profits to distribute to the poor. He served the public: he sat on town committees, was elected deputy to the General Court, and joined in the founding of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company. Such was his public prominence and respectability that it was he who was designated, in November 1637, to receive the surrendered weapons of the seventy-five disarmed antinomians.26
Two years later all of this structure of prominence and respectability came crashing down. He was publicly charged with excessive profiteering: “taking above six-pence in the shilling profit; in some above eight-pence; and, in some small things, above two for one.” The General Court fined him for this offense £200, but then reduced the fine to £80. The church then took up the matter. The elders studied “how farr I was guilty of all those claymors and rumors that then I lay under” and, after an “exquisite search” into Keayne’s defense, condemned him “in the Name of the Church for selling his wares at excessive Rates, to the Dishonor of Gods name, the Offence of the General Cort, and the Publique scandall of the Cuntry.” Keayne lived under this ban until the following May, when “upon his penetentiall acknowledgment thereof … and pr[o]mise of further satisfaction to any that have just offence against him, He is now become Reconciled to the Church.”
The horror of this fall from grace, the embarrassment and, he believed, the injustice of it, was something he would never forget. Fourteen years later, when he came to write his will, the wound was still raw, and he poured out his bitterness and self-justification in a passionate fifty-thousand-word apologia that filled 158 pages of the Suffolk County probate records and that reveals as no other document of the time the inner tensions of Puritan life.
It was the greife of my soule … that any act of mine (though not justly but by misconstruction) should be an occasion of scandall to the Gospell and p[ro]fession of the Lord Jesus or that my selfe should be looked at as one that had brought any just dishonor to God … if it had beene in my owne power I should rather have chosen to have p[e]rished in my cradle than to have lived to such a time.
It had all been a misunderstanding, he wrote, compounded by the viciousness of his enemies, and bewildering in view of the strict orthodoxy of his beliefs. He had renounced—had never indulged in—all “knowne errors, all Popish and Prelaticall superstitions, all Anabaptisticall inthusiasms and Familisticall delusions, with all other fayned devises, and all Old and New upstart opinions, unsound and blasphemous errors, and other high imaginations.” Of course, he knew that nothing he had ever done or ever could do—all his “righteousness, sanctific[ati]on and close walking with God if it were or had bin a thousand times more exact than ever I attayned too”—could secure for him God’s justification. Still, the fact that he had been blessed with worldly success was surely a sign of God’s approval. And why should he not have been blessed?
I have not lived an idle, lazie or dronish life nor spent my time wantonly, fruitlessly or in company keeping [nor]…had in my whole time either in Old England or New, many spare houres to spend unprofitably away or to refresh myselfe with recreations, except reading and writing hath beene a recreation to me which sometimes is mixt with paine and labor enough, but have rather studyed and endeavored to redeeme my time as a thing most deare and precyous to me.
He had lived a disciplined life of self-denial and devotion to the word of God in order to reach the greatest measure of success in the work of this world and the next. And were they not the same? The self-denial, careful accounting, and passion for attainment that were mandated by Keayne’s religion were the same virtues that ruled his business life. And yet while they impelled him
forward, at the same time they limited and challenged the righteousness of his success. He was caught between the two impulses: the God-given passion to succeed, to profit, by infinite care and calculation, and the need to adhere to moral constraints. The same body of religious precepts that had systematized the virtues making for business success checked their free play in behalf of the community good and the avoidance of excess, self-indulgence, vanity, and sensuality. He was at once driven and constrained, and the tensions had proved insupportable.
And so it continued. Restored to his offices if not to public approval, busy as before in his meticulous note taking in church, he fell foul of the authorities again, in a notorious court case of 1642—important in constitutional history—that grew from the charge that he had robbed the widow Sherman of her sow. And when that was settled and he was once more restored to official acceptance, he relieved his tensions in other ways: in belligerent challenges to those who opposed him, in slackening attention to his public duties. Finally, in 1652, his lifelong self-discipline entirely failed, and his disgrace was complete:
Whereas Capt Robert Keayne beinge acused to this Court for drunkenes … and findinge that he is proved to have been three times drunke and to have drunke to excesse two times, for which offenses the Court doth fine him thirty six shillings and eyght pence
—to which was added fifty-five shillings two pence in Court expenses and dismissal from his judicial post.
Keayne’s career, in its prominence and profuse documentation, concluding in the cri de coeur of his testimonial lamentation, is unique, but the problems he faced were not. They lay at the heart of the region’s religious culture. The doctrine of the just price, which he was accused of having violated and which conflicted head-on with the entrepreneurial instincts fortified by Puritanism’s worldly asceticism, was integral to the medieval substratum of Puritan belief, and it was discussed in elaborate colloquies by both Cotton and Winthrop. Others too were caught in this cultural contradiction, which extended beyond individual cases of avarice into broad ranges of social behavior where legal restraints proved futile. Price controls had to be imposed, but they failed; wage ceilings had to be mandated, but they were largely ignored; and sumptuary laws, reflecting the Puritans’ horror of display, vainglory, and economic waste—and reflecting also the social disarray, the disordering of traditional statuses, inherent in a borderland society—were passed, but they had very little effect.27
So in 1651, in the most poignant expression of the erosion of values that had shaped the Puritan mission and the confusion of inherited statuses on the American frontier, the General Court of Massachusetts, led by a remnant of the ancient fathers (Endecott, Dudley, Bellingham), lamented the corruption of the world the founders had struggled to create. It was a matter of grief, they declared, that “intollerable excesse and bravery hath crept in uppon us, and especially amongst people of meane condition, to the dishonnor of God, the scandall of our profession, the consumption of estates, and altogether unsuiteable to our povertie.” It was their duty, therefore, to declare their
utter detestation and dislike that men or weomen of meane condition should take uppon them the garbe of gentlemen, by wearing gold or silver lace or buttons, or points at their knees, or to walk in great bootes, or weomen of the same rancke to weare silke or tiffany hoodes or scarfes, which though allowable to persons of greater estates, or more liberall education, yett wee cannot but judge it intollerable in persons of such like condition.
They therefore prohibited anyone “whose visible estates, reall and personall, shall not exceed the true and indifferent valew of two hundred pounds, shall weare any gold or silver lace, or gold and silver buttons, or any bone lace above two shillings per yard, or silk hoods or scarfes, uppon the pœnaltie of tenn shillings for every such offence.” Those who defied this ruling would be taxed at the level of wealth they pretended to—provided, they added in an elegiac conclusion that went to the heart of their discontents, that the law would not apply to anyone “whose education and imployments have binn above the ordinary degree, or whose estates have binn considerable, though now decaied.”28
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Excess, pretension, and “bravery” in dress and behavior on the part of people of “meane condition” were signs enough that the Bible Commonwealth was in disarray. But problems suddenly appeared that chiefly affected not so much those of “meane condition” as those “of greater estates” and “more liberall education,” those who lived the most considered lives.
In 1640 the Puritan colonists were pitched into turmoil by events abroad. The oppressive world from which they had escaped had suddenly been transformed. Charles I was forced to recall Parliament, which quickly took charge of public affairs. It impeached Strafford and Laud, passed the Triennial Act obliging the king to convene Parliament every three years, dismantled the structure of Episcopacy, and eliminated the oppressive courts of Star Chamber and High Commission. The Puritans’ spiritual kinsman Cromwell led the Parliamentary forces to victory against the royalists in the first phase of the Civil War and was poised for greater conquests not only in England but in Ireland and Scotland as well. And above all, the religious scene had changed from coercive conformity to open toleration.
The effect of all of this on New England was transformative. Impulses were set in motion that together shaped the future of the Puritan colonies.
THE UPHEAVAL IN ENGLAND inverted the migration pattern. Relieved of oppression and the threats of a coercive regime, the Puritans in England felt increasingly secure, and the westward flow of desperate emigrants quickly dwindled and then came to a stop. At the same time New England’s prominent people, those of “quality,” were being welcomed back, to contribute to England’s revolution, to resume their old positions, and to consider opportunities unknown in earlier years. An eastward remigration began that lasted in different phases of intensity for the next twenty years and that led to a renewed search for justification and identity.29
The effect of discovering that their people at home had triumphed—those who had stood their ground against oppression while they themselves had fled—and that much of what could only have been done in the wilderness could now be done at home, raised disturbing questions. In the 1630s they had raked their consciences, measured their resolve, and tested their fortitude before they had joined the exodus to New England, and they had pledged themselves to share in the preservation of threatened values and in the creation of a truly reformed Christianity. Could they now, in good conscience, withdraw from that whole endeavor and return to their former lives relieved of oppression? Could they simply abandon their friends and neighbors with whom they had shared the burden of bringing Christianity and civilization to a barbarous world? They had no choice but to reconsider and reassess the decisions they once had made in the light of present circumstances.
For some, of course, return was inconceivable: secular leaders like Winthrop and Dudley, whose commitment to the new Jerusalem had consumed their lives; leading clerics like Hooker, Cotton, and Shepard, who were responsible for defining New England’s Puritanism; and prospering farmers now possessed of land of their own and deeply invested in its cultivation. Conversely, others at either end of the spectrum were only too eager to leave and could do so without much consideration—those on the “left” who had been ostracized for their radicalism and those on the “right” who had resisted the compromises of New England’s Congregationalism. But for many, especially those of “greater estates” and “more liberall education,” there was no obvious response. Return was something to consider carefully. It had obvious attractions. Clerics with years of service before them were excited by the tolerant religiosity of England’s new regime and the prospect of appointment to pulpits suddenly purged of Anglicans, and this at a time when vacancies in New England were becoming scarce. Soldiers and public officials could imagine roles for themselves in the reformed government; and all those who had never learned to cope with the harsh environment could look forward to
more comfortable lives at home.30
But if return was an option to consider, it was an option fraught with moral ambiguities. There were doubts, hesitations, a sense of guilt and betrayal. Many felt the need for a “just call” to sanctify such a change of course and the sudden departure from friends and a great cause—some indication that Providence concurred in a decision that might be construed as simply the search for crass betterment: future employment, the recovery of property and inheritance, the welcome of friends, and escape from poverty and a harsh climate. John Davenport, in poor health and fearing another winter in New Haven, glossed the admonition “thou shalt not kill” as an argument to leave for England since doing so would preserve a life—his own. Nathaniel Ward, who had been expelled from his ministry in 1632 and for twelve years thereafter had preached in Ipswich, Massachusetts, explained, in his rollicking, satirical Simple Cobler of Aggawam (1647), with appropriate reference to Hebrews 11:9, that while “no man ought to forsake his own country but upon extraordinary cause … when that cause ceases he is bound in conscience to return if he can.” Ward could and did. He ended his notable career in England, as rector of a church some four miles from his original parish. Some found moral refuge in obtaining official certificates of release from their church covenant, charitably donated by their pastors, friends, and neighbors.31
The moral pressures could be intense. Did England’s reformation cast doubt on God’s intentions for New England? Richard Saltonstall, whose father and sisters had fled the colony within a year of their arrival in 1630, was so conflicted in 1640 that he felt it necessary to bind himself by solemn oath never to desert Massachusetts, so long as the purity of the colony’s religious life continued. But when he heard that his wife, recovering her health in England, was advised not to return to America, he went to John Cotton for advice. What should he do? Abandon his wife or violate his oath? Cotton, ever the compromiser (in his will he would himself restrict his benefactions to those who remained in the colony), replied that a Christian may be called by God to leave a country even if it remains in a state of purity “upon sundry just grounds,” in this case to preserve the sanctity of marriage—so long, that is, that he comes back when he can. Similarly, the son of Governor George Wyllys of Connecticut was required by his father to sign an oath, with God as witness, before leaving for England pledging to return to the colony without fail. As the years passed with no return, Wyllys berated his son for violating his oath. The son replied that there was no need for him to return since England now had “many churches gathered … and the purity of God’s ordinances may there be enjoyed.” Arguments went back and forth between the two, until the governor, refusing to “quit” his son from his engagement, returned the signed oath to him with the admonition: “seriously consider of it.”32
The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America: The Conflict of Civilizations, 1600-1675 Page 58
