The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America: The Conflict of Civilizations, 1600-1675

by Bernard Bailyn

  It had long been believed that ores of various kinds were abundant in New England, and Winthrop, Jr., like most of the pansophists of Hartlib’s circle in London, was devoted to the study of minerals, their qualities and possibilities. He soon discovered excellent iron ore (bog iron) deposits near Braintree and Saugus, Massachusetts.

  He had everything he needed to launch New England’s iron industry: entrepreneurial skills; excellent contacts among scientists, technicians, and financiers; and above all energy and enthusiasm, generated by the belief that this project would realize some of the theories of the advanced thinkers of Europe. He shared their belief that in applied scientific knowledge, drawn from esoteric sources, lay hope for the true betterment of mankind. The ironworks project was not therefore merely a business enterprise that might help rescue New England’s economy; it was also a demonstration that from hitherto unknown religio-scientific sources could come what the Rosicrucians believed would “regenerate the whole world.” And he also had the collaboration of a remarkable young pansophist thinker, agronomist, and ebullient “projector,” Dr. Robert Child.45

  The Cambridge-educated son of a prosperous landholder in Kent, Child had completed an extensive tour of Europe, touching base with circles of advanced scientific and commercial thinkers from Amsterdam to Rome, when he completed his medical studies in Padua in 1638. Then twenty-five, he joined Hartlib’s circle and immersed himself in advanced alchemical, agricultural, and commercial studies. His focus was not on theories alone, however, but on the possibilities of putting them to work in practical affairs. Like many of the theorists, he saw in the tabula rasa of America in general and New England in particular a unique site for the practical application of the most advanced ideas. Within a year of his return to England, he left for America and made a survey of the colonies from the Chesapeake to Maine, assessing the possibilities in applied science and commercial development. He noted with approval the Puritan colonies’ cultural advantages, especially the newly founded college in Cambridge to whose library he contributed books on science, the newly installed press, and the spread of local schools. In 1641 he returned to London with a comprehensive report on his findings and the determination to follow words with deeds.

  It was in London in 1641 that he probably met young Winthrop, then serving as an agent of the Bay Colony. The two had much in common. Both were entrepreneurial reformers devoted equally to science and religion. Both believed in the delicately balanced principles of worldly asceticism—commitments to industry and frugality, personal profit and the public good, the exploitation of God’s benefactions and the stewardship of wealth. And both were pragmatists yet deeply engaged in the study of esoteric lore.

  They quickly joined forces and together returned to New England. There Child immediately launched a series of projects ranging from the search for the Lake of the Iroquois to experiments with fruit and wine production in Maine, the development of a timber industry, expanded fisheries, and mining. But Child’s major venture was the Saugus Ironworks, of which he became a major investor.46

  The ironworks project had been initiated four years earlier when the younger Winthrop, fund-raising in England, had gathered twenty investors—men “of good rank and quality,” some with extensive knowledge of iron manufacturing—into a Company of Undertakers for the Ironworks in New England. Upon his return to New England with a shipload of miners, foundrymen, and laborers, he had launched the construction at Saugus of a highly subsidized bloomery for smelting ore, a rolling and slitting mill, and a forge for crafting finished ironware products. He had extracted important concessions from the General Court—land grants, tax exemptions, a marketing monopoly, and the relaxation of legal and religious constraints on the labor force of “prophane persons” he had recruited. By 1645 the project was capitalized at over £15,000, the plant had a labor force of 135 workers, and its ironware was beginning to enter the local markets.47

  But there were problems, and they quickly grew in severity. The company’s profits were limited by the low market prices set for its products by the government in exchange for its concessions, by the high cost of labor in the frontier economy, and by the difficulties of transporting supplies and products. The General Court was beginning to complain that the level of production was not matching the value of its subsidies, and the imported workers—strangers, the elder Winthrop wrote, “no members of churches … some of them corrupt in judgment, and others profane”—were proving to be increasingly obnoxious to the Puritan regime. Few of them, Winthrop discovered, were being “cured of their distempers” by the Puritans’ admonitions, as he had hoped they would be. Massachusetts’s immigration restrictions, believed to be necessary if the colony was to maintain its religious integrity, were proving to conflict directly with the labor needs of the new enterprises. With Baptists, among other dissidents, flatly banned from the colony and Presbyterians, like Child himself, suspect despite the fact that Presbyterianism was now in the mainstream of post-Laudian England, the relationship between the Puritan governments and Child’s enterprises grew bitter. The bitterness intensified when the ironworks’ chief manager, Richard Leader, was censured and fined for “slander and sedition” and for violating “Christianity, morality, and civility.”

  Child, shocked at discovering “lawes banishing and punishing all schismaticks,” even those who had poured out their blood and estates in the service of Parliament, began a campaign of protest. Voicing the concerns of many of his coinvestors, he declared that nothing would ever prosper in New England unless there were liberty of conscience and unless the Puritan colonies relaxed their rules against “strangers.”

  Frustrated in many ways—as an investor in the ironworks, as a manager seeking a useful labor force, and as a Presbyterian “sojourner” barred from direct engagement in both church and state—Child found the situation intolerable. There was bitterness everywhere in New England, he reported to Hartlib, “breach upon breach”—between ministers and people and between members and nonmembers of the official community. Truly, he wrote, if things remained for long the way they were, everything would be lost. The situation had become so bad, he wrote, that to escape the Puritans’ jurisdiction, he had decided to move to Maine, which he assumed was beyond Massachusetts’s jurisdiction.

  Other investors, even some close to the Puritan leadership, agreed, and the result was an open challenge to the Bay Colony’s basic structure in the Remonstrance of May 1646.48

  The Remonstrance was signed by seven men of varied religious background: two were Presbyterians, one was faithful to the Church of England, and the rest were Congregationalists of somewhat unsure commitment. All of the signers, and those who supported them, had grievances against the Puritan regime. Most, like Child, were reacting to the restrictions on the new enterprises; some were associated with agitators like William Vassall, who was petitioning Parliament to quash the Massachusetts charter; some came from towns that had controversies with the General Court; and some resented the disabilities of nonfreemen. Thus Thomas Burton, one of the signers, a churchman sympathetic to Presbyterianism and a lawyer of sorts, had been involved with the town of Hingham’s explosive charge that the colony’s magistrates had exceeded their legal powers, and another, David Yale, kin of the merchant founders of the New Haven colony, had suffered from the church trial and excommunication of his mother for “divers scandalous offences.”49

  The Remonstrance brought into sharp focus all of these grievances and all of Child’s resentments of the restrictions he had endured personally and those that had been imposed on the enterprises he had designed for the betterment of mankind. The seven signers, representing, they said, “divers others,” presented themselves, in an elaborate, ironic metaphor, as being “under decks, being at present unfit for higher employments,” but in that lowly position in the Bay Colony’s ship of church and state, they were in a good position to “perceive those leaks which will inevitably sink this weake and ill compacted vessell.”

  Obviou
sly, they wrote, God’s hand, which had preserved the colonists in their settlement in New England, had turned against them, blasting all their carefully planned designs and excellent prospects. Instead of the “staple commodities” and “comfortable subsistance” the complainants had looked forward to, they had been devastated by “unwonted malignant sicknesses” and brought to the brink of poverty. Despite their best efforts, “even to the exhausting of our estates and spirits,” things were getting worse all the time, “threatening (in our apprehensions) of no less than finall ruine.” And why? What were the “special leaks” that were leading them and New England to catastrophe?

  First: though they were all English, they had been denied the “sure and comfortable enjoyment of our lives, libertyes, and estates, according to our due and naturall rights, as freeborne subjects of the English nation.” What was needed was the establishment of “the fundamentall and wholesome lawes of our native country … agreeable to our English tempers” in place of the peculiar ordinances of the Bible Commonwealth.

  Second: the limitation of the colony’s franchise and officeholding to church members was odious, and in this they spoke for the “many thousands,” including friends of the victorious reform Parliament of England, who had been disbarred from “all civill imployments” in the colony, though they were freely taxed and their goods seized at will. Massachusetts, they pointed out, was not a sovereign state but merely “a colonie or corporation of England.” The denial of English rights had led to “secret discontents, murmurings … discouragements in their callings, unsettlednes in their minds, strife, [and] contention … The Lord only knows to what a flame in time it may kindle.”

  And third: the “sober, righteous and godly” members of the Church of England, even those agreeable to the “latest and best reformation of England, Scotland, &c” (i.e., Presbyterians) were denied communion in New England’s churches. And they were compelled “under a severe fine, every Lords day to appear at the congregation” and to attend the baptism of other men’s children but not their own. Give liberty to the Church of England members, they wrote; take them into your congregations, that they may enjoy all of Christ’s liberties and ordinances.

  All of this, the Remonstrants insisted, must be done or, they concluded portentously, we “shall be necessitated to apply our humble desires to the honourable houses of parliament, who we hope will take our sad conditions into their serious considerations.”50

  The threat was not lost on the colony’s magistrates. The General Court immediately appointed a committee, which included Winthrop, Sr., Dudley, and Bellingham, to respond to the challenge.

  Their response was uncompromising. They denied all the allegations and denounced the Remonstrants for their “dareing presumption” in invoking God’s name to serve their “corrupt project.” The petitioners spoke of leaks that will sink New England’s civil and ecclesiastical government, “houlding us forth as the scumme and off-scouring” that our English brethren “avoyde as a pest.” But in fact Massachusetts’s government is framed by its charter, which includes the fundamental and common laws of England, making allowance for the disproportion between the populous, wealthy kingdom and the poor infant colony and for provincials’ understandable ignorance of the niceties of English law.

  On every point the Remonstrants are wrong, the magistrates continued. Is it offensive, as they claim, that the magistrates [upper house] have a veto power in the legislature? That structure follows perfectly the model of mixed government. Oaths and covenants are arbitrary? There are none that are not allowed by the charter and that were practiced when the company was still in England. Unjust taxes? Nothing is charged but what is absolutely necessary and which all freemen and officers pay equally. And did the Remonstrants say they speak for all nonfreemen? Not one had joined them in their protest. And all nonfreemen should know from their experiences elsewhere—Virginia, London—that “Englishmen may live comfortably and securely under some other lawes besides the common and statute lawes of England” and that the privileges of freeborn Englishmen do not include the right to vote, even if they pay taxes. Yet here as in England nonfreemen received the same justice as freemen, and they have the same right to property and the same access to church, assembly, and trade.

  And who, in any case, are these Remonstrants? What stake do they have in the colony? One, Child, is but a sojourner here who has never paid a penny in taxes. A second chooses not to be a freeman in order to escape burdens. A third is a freeman but chooses not to be a church member. A fourth is also a sojourner and has no estate. A fifth is too young to know of commonwealth affairs. A sixth is in fact a resident of Rhode Island, not Massachusetts. And the seventh is “an ould grocer of London” who is so ancient and so infirm that he has forgotten the laws of London and the duties one owed government.

  As for the complaint that “sober, righteous and godly men” are barred from sharing in the church covenant: such charges are misrepresentations. The truth is that many of those who are not admitted to church communion are “fraudulous” in their testimonials of faith, or corrupt in their opinions, or ignorant of the principles of religion, or simply refuse publicly to profess their convictions. Few have ever been denied simply because they refused to testify to their faith. And those who refuse, if they agree to commit to the ordinances of Christ, will be admitted.

  Do the Remonstrants object to compulsory church attendance? Surely “sober and godly” men, such as they profess to be, need no compulsion to attend church: only the “loose and irreligious” need to be compelled. Should all be allowed into full communion, as they demand? Some certainly need to be “fitted” for communion by instruction before they are admitted; otherwise ignorant and profane people will populate the congregations. As to the ban on Baptists, such was their contentiousness that the colony had to provide for its own safety by keeping them out. Anyone we consider “in charity … to be beleevers” are freely admitted to private prayers and are visited in times of sickness “&c,” unless they refuse this benevolence. Finally, as to the denial of baptism to nonmembers’ children, that matter is now under discussion and will soon be decided.

  There is no general issue, the General Court wrote. The Remonstrants’ belief that everyone should be allowed unfettered liberty and that no distinctions should ever be drawn among people has been utterly refuted by experience. Eight years ago we had just such claimants “who out of theire tendernes of libertie of conscience, and civill libertie … made greate disturbance both in church and civill state.” They predicted, as now do the Remonstrants, that without these total liberties there will be ruin in the land, and so they fled to Rhode Island, where they established the regime of their desires. “But alas! it was but a dreame … For this liberty and equallity so fomented [men’s] naturall corruption” that they fell out among themselves, split off into three or four groups, and ended by destroying both church and state. From such a fate “the Lord deliver us, and all the seed of Israell to the comeing of Christ Jesus.”51

  But the Lord, they knew, saves those who save themselves, and the Puritan establishment wasted no time in taking action to provide for New England’s deliverance from this peril. Two of the petitioners, attempting to leave Massachusetts, were apprehended and forced to post bond for their good behavior before being released. The remaining Remonstrants were formally charged with twelve counts of defamation, slander, sedition, and denying the jurisdiction of the Court. Despite the point-by-point denial that the petitioners quickly composed, they were all convicted—Child for threatening an appeal to Parliament and for contemptuous speeches—and fined until they repented.

  Once freed, Child busied himself preparing documents to present to Parliament, but he failed to anticipate the Puritans’ vigilance. His papers were seized before his ship sailed, and they were publicly examined. To the magistrates’ horror, they included not only a petition from nonfreemen for liberty of conscience and for the appointment of a royal governor, but also the Remonstrants’ tale of mistr
eatment and their demands that a Presbyterian church system be established and that oaths of loyalty to England be extracted from the colonists. And beyond even that, they requested the forfeiture of Massachusetts’s charter and raised the question of whether treasonous statements had not been uttered in both church and state in Massachusetts.52

  Nothing could have been more inflammatory. Child was hauled before the governor and Council with little ceremony. Denounced, the Baconian scientist, rationalist, and world reformer flew into “a great passion, and gave big words.” He calmed down only when told to behave himself like the person of quality he was or he would be clapped in irons and thrown into prison. He then agreed to post bonds of £800 to guarantee his remaining in Boston until his trial, and settled in with the manager of the ironworks to await the verdict—two verdicts, in fact: one for his involvement in the Remonstrance and another for his role in writing the inflammatory documents that had been discovered.

  The first judgment came in November 1646, when his colleagues were variously punished for their crimes; Child was fined £50. Months passed until in June 1647 he was tried again and this time fined £200 for conspiring to subvert the government of the Bay Colony. Once the verdicts were in, there followed a blur of payments, refusals, jailings, and abatements that lasted into the 1650s. Child himself paid his £200 fine, but when in October 1647 he returned to England, he left the £50 fee to be drawn out of his investments in the ironworks.53

  Upon his arrival in London he discovered that while he had been fighting the charges in Boston, Massachusetts had dispatched to England the “Smothe tounged Cunning” Edward Winslow to represent its interest before Parliament’s Commission for Plantations. The notorious Gorton had preceded him and was petitioning Parliament on behalf of Rhode Island and against Massachusetts; in August 1646 he had published his elaborate indictment of the Puritans, Simplicities Defence … or Innocency Vindicated. In his campaign against the Bay Colony Gorton had been joined by the well-connected, cantankerous William Vassall, always a thorn in Winthrop’s side (“a man of a busye & factious spirit, & allwayes opposite to the Civill Governmentes of the Countrye”), who had left New England with the Remonstrants. The two demanded universal toleration in New England, as did Maj. John Child, Robert’s brother, determined to justify the Remonstrants’ charges and redeem his brother’s reputation. Winslow quickly replied to Gorton’s assault in his own fiery Hypocracie Unmasked, to which John Child replied in New-England’s Jonas Cast up at London, a narrative of New England’s persecution of “divers honest and godly persons” for merely seeking “Ministers and Church-government according to the best Reformation of England and Scotland.”