MASSACHUSETTS
25
MASSACHUSETTS
I. Colonial History.— A.. S'ert/emen<. — The explora-
tions and set t Icinents of the Northmen upon the shores
of Massachusetts, the voyages of the Cabots, the tem-
porary sett lenient (1602) of the Oosnold party on one of
the EHzabeth Islands of Buzzard's Bay, and the ex-
plorations and the mapping of the New England coast
byCaptain Joliii Smith are usually passed over as more
or less conjectural. The undisputed history of Massa-
chusetts begins with the arrival of the "Mayflower"
in December, 1620. Nevertheless the due apprecia-
tion of these previous events gives a ready and logical
explanation of many acts, customs, and laws of the
founders of this commonwealth which, in general, are
imperfectly understood. The early maps (1582) mark
the present territory of New England under the name
" Norumbega ", and show that the coast had been vis-
ited by Christian mariners — whether by fishermen in
search of the fisheries set forth by Cabot, or by the
daring Drakes, Frobishers, and Hawkinses of Eliza-
beth's reign, does not seem clear. It is an accepted
fact that, when Gosnold set out in 1602, there was not
a single Enghsh settlement on the Continent. France
did not acknowledge the claim of England over the
whole of the territory. A
French colony had been
established where now is
northern Virginia, under the
name of "New France".
» This was after Verazzano's
7MI expedition made by order
of Francis I. A French
explorer, too, the Huguenot
Sieur de Monts, had been
to Canada, and knew much
about the resources of that
country, especially the fur
trade of the Indian tribes.
Henry IV had given De
Monts a patent to all the
country now included in
FORMING PART OF THE Se.4l OF New England, also a mo-
Massachusetts nopoly of the fur trade.
All this is important, because it entered into the con- ditions of the early permanent settlement here.
For a quarter of a century prior to the coming of the Pilgrims, the French and the Dutch resented the en- croachments of the Enghsh. "The Great Patent for New England", of 1620, granted to Gorges and his forty associates, has been called a " despotic as well as a gigantic commercial monopoly". This grant in- cluded the New Netherlands of the Dutch, the French Acadia and, indeed, nearly all the present inhabited British possessions in North America, besides all New England, the State of New York, half of New Jersey, nearly all of Pennsylvania, and the country to the west — in short, all the territory from the fortieth de- gree of north latitude to the forty-eighth, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. The English had in- creased the enmity of the French by destroying the Catholic settlements at Ste-Croix and at Port-Royal, and had aroused the suspicion and hostility of the Indians by the treachery of Hunt, an act described by Mather as " one which constrained the English to sus- pend their trade and abandon their prospects of a settlement in New England".
The religious conditions were no less ominous for the Pilgrims. At the opening of the sixteenth century, all Christian Europe, with slight exceptions, was Cath- olic and loval to the papacy; at the close of that cen- tury England herself was the mother of three anti- papacy sects: the State Church and its two divisions; the Nonconformists, or Puritans; and the Separatists, or Pilgrims. At the time of the sailing of the " May- flower", the Puritans had become as fully disenfran- chised by the Anglican Church as the Pilgrims had estranged themselves from both; each distrusted the others; all three hated the Church of Rome. Gorges
and his associates had found the French and their
Jesuit missionaries a stumbling-block in the way of
securing fur-trading privileges from the Indians. The
alleged gold and copper mines of Smith and of Gosnold
were now regarded as myths; unless something could
be done at once, the opportunities offered by their
charter monopoly would be worthless. A permanent
English settlement in America was the only sure way
of preventing the French and the Dutch from acquir-
ing the Virginia territory. The Gorges company knew
of the cherished hopes of the Pilgrims to find a home
away from their English persecutors, and, after much
chicanery on the part of the promoters, the company
agreed to found a home for the Pilgrims in the new
world. The articles of agreement were wholly com-
mercial, and the "Mayflower" sailed for Virginia.
History differs in its interpretation of the end of that
voyage, but all agree that the Pilgrims, in landing at
Plymouth, 22 December, 1620, were outside any juris-
diction of their patrons, the Virginia Company. The
Pilgrims themselves recognized their difficulty, and
the famous " Compact " was adopted, before landing,
as a basis of government by mutual agreement.
Gorges protected his company's investment by ob-
taining from James I the new charter of 1620 which
controlled, on a commercial basis, all religious coloni-
zation in America. The struggle of race against race,
tribe against tribe, neighbour against neighbour were
all encouraged so long as the warfare brought gain to
the mercenary adventurers at home. The Pilgrims,
finding themselves deserted by the instigators of this
ill-feeling, were forced by the law of self-preservation
to continue religious intolerance and the extermina-
tion of the Indians. Thus it is that we find the laws,
the customs, and the manners of these first English
settlers so interwoven with the religio-commercial
principle. The coming of the Puritans, in 1629-30,
added the factor of pohtics, which resulted in estab-
lishing in America the very thing against which these
" Purists " had fought at home, namely, the union of
Church and State. Here, again, at Puritan Salem,
Gorges and Mason cloaked their commercialism under
religion, as the accounts of La Tour and Winslow
attest, and so effective were their machinations that,
as early as 1635, Endicott's zeal had not left a set of
the king's colours intact with the red cross thereon —
that " relic of popery insufferable in a Puritan com-
munity ".
B. Colonial Legislation.— The legaUty of the early acts of the colonists depends, to a great degree, on whether the charters granted to the two colonies were for the purpose of instituting a corporation for trading purposes, or whether they are regarded as constitu- tions and foundations of a governnicnl Tliw much- controverted point has never been sitil. a s:ii i-;f:icto- rily. The repeated demands from thr kiiiL', '>liiii with threat of prosecution, for the return of the charters were ignored, so that, until 1684, the colony was prac- tically a free state, independent of E^nglaiid, and pro- fessing little, if any, loyalty. Judging from the corre- spondence, il is more tiian prohahlo that 11h- intention of the Crown in granting the charter was that the cor- poration should have a local habitation in England, and it is equally evident that the colony did not pos- sess the right "to make its own laws. It is plainly state<l, in the patent granted to the Puritans, who the governor and other officials of the colony should be, showing thereby that the Crown retainc<l the right of governing. A new charter was granted in 1692, cover- ing Mas.sachusetts, I'l\ mouth. Maine, Nova Scotia, and the intervening terrilorv, entilled "The Province of Massachusetts Bay in New England " ; iievcrt heless it was not until the Treaty of Utrecht, in li 13, that the proceedings on the part of the home Government, to as.sert the Crown's rights, abated notably. During the half-century in which the Puritans ignored the terms of their charter, and made laws in accordance
